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SuzukiSavage.com
/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl General Category >> Rubber Side Down! >> The health of your regulator/rectifier with LED's /cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1564979975 Message started by batman on 08/04/19 at 21:39:35 |
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Title: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LED's Post by batman on 08/04/19 at 21:39:35 Early this riding season My reg./rec. failed . The style (a Y wound alternator with 3 ungrounded legs, and a reg./rec. that sheds extra power to ground by releasing it as heat-thru the blades found on it's surface) it turns out, is standard use on about 90% of all motorcycles , only differing in output ,governed by the power needs of each bike, like lighting ,ignition , accessories and battery size. While I haven't found in print anywhere, the output of your alternator in DC amps , I will ASSUME that it is at least 10 amps ,and that the voltage level is around 14 volts. These assumptions are based on factors such as ; to charge the battery the voltage has to be higher than 12v or the current wouldn't flow to it, and after riding to the point the battery is fully charged ,a reading across the battery poles is in the neighborhood of 13.5 volts ( if the system an battery are in good condition) and the fact that the resistance of a 100ft. of copper wire is about .36 volts. The fact that the ignition draws very little power, as does the decomp timer , turn signals , neutral light and brake light are not on continually ,I have discounted altogether , but all the rest of the lighting systems is , with low beam on it draws 7.5 amps / high beam 8 amps . normal charging rate of a new battery is said to be max. 2 amps , bringing the needed output to around 10amps.(any added power can be provided by the battery with it's 220 cca) I am guilty of using LED turn signals ,but they have little affect on my system. Where the use of LED light can provide better lighting , and last much longer, the power savings can become a two way street . If you plan on adding additional accessories the power saved can help. I didn't ,so I stopped . Being that when the battery becomes fully charged ,the regulator needs to dump power, it heats up , in the stock bike it needs to shed only about 2 amps, however if you also use an LED headlight which draws about 1.25 amps ,now it needs to shed another 4.4amps ,or a total of 6.4 amps , over 3 times the heat it normally sees. Heat is hardly a friend to electronics. If you intend to use LED's I would urge you to check out regulator /rectifier s that use Mosfet Technology these rid the same amount of power, with a decrease of 50% less heat , with a cost of a stock regulator from Suzuki , and work with the same type system that the Savage and most bikes do. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by DragBikeMike on 08/04/19 at 23:09:09 This is an excellent observation. Makes sense that if you reduce the load on the system by installing equipment that requires less amperage, then the regulator will have to work harder. Ever thought about testing it? You could operate the motorcycle with the normal electrical load for a predetermined time period. Then disconnect the lights and operate again. Monitor regulator temperature. Probably have to control parameters like starting with the regulator at the same temp for each test, running for exactly the same amount of time and at the same rpm. Looks like a cool learning project. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by kamelryttarn on 08/04/19 at 23:21:44 I don't believe the the LEDs means that the regulator has to work MUCH harder, probably just a little bit. I suspect that the unregulated output from the alternator can reach well over 100V AC and just as you say the regulator shunts everything above a certain voltage (usually just over 14V DC) and dumps is as heat. In my experience just because something CAN supply 100A doesn't mean that it "prefers" to do so. Heat generated is normally a product of resistance and current flowing through the circuit. If the alternator and regulator has a resistance of 1 Ohm and the load is 10A and you change the load to 1 A you only have 10% of the original heat losses generated. (This was kind of a bad example since 10A over 1 ohm would generate a voltage drop of 10V but you get the idea). My point is that below the "shunt voltage" of the regulator the load is LESS than it was before meaning that it will generate LESS heat than before. And when the regulator starts to regulate it still shunts the the same voltage through the same wires so I doubt it would make it much worse than before. [edit] Just realized I have the parts necessary to measure the current going through the three wires from the alternator. I recently calibrated a three phase current transformer to use with a large electrical heater in my brewery. With the oscilloscope it's fairly easy to measure the current going through the wires with the lights on or off. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by Armen on 08/05/19 at 04:35:58 A bit of anecdotal info: I had an SV650 for years. Many of the early bikes (Gen I) toasted their reg/rect units. The common solution was to use one from a Gixxer 1000, as it was more butch. The Gen II bikes didn't seem to have this problem. Thought about this a bit. The Gen I bikes hid their units under bodywork. Later bikes had them out in the open. Seems that more of the folks that were sport riders/track/racers toasted them than the putter around folks. Made me think that maybe the track/race bikes didn't run headlights, and tended to rev the nuts off their bikes. Higher revs means more amperage on output, means more heat to lose. So, the bikes with less load were heating up and killing their Reg/Rect units faster than those with headlights and lower revs. Never did a huge detailed study on this, but it seemed to make sense to me. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by Dave on 08/05/19 at 07:17:30 I have modified my bike and it uses LED's for everything, and it no longer has the electric decompression solenoid....the bike starts within a couple of revolution and I suspect there is very little battery charging needed. The headlight is currently a Cyclops H4 that is claimed to be 38 watts. The tail light, instrument and license plate lights use very low current. I also have a Lithium Ion battery. So far I have gone 10,000 miles without an problems. Part of this may be that my rides are limited in length on this Cafe' conversion, and most rides are less than an hour in length. I may ride all day long.......but there are lots of stops where the rectifier may be able to cool down. The rectifier is mounted to a steel plate as a heat sink just like the original steel fender provides, and it is in a place that gets good air flow. Most of my riding is done with the engine in the 3,000 - 4,000 rpm range. It well could be that if I was riding long distances between stops I could experience "heat stroke" as a result of the smaller electrical load.....but so far no issues. Batman: With 37,000 miles on your rectifier....maybe it just got tired and would have failed with the stock bulbs in place? There are numerous reports that the stators fail over time.....the engine heat evidently breaks down the insulation over time and they short out. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by verslagen1 on 08/05/19 at 07:38:41 My rotor failed, but I didn't discover that until I had replaced everything else. In the process, I put in a mosfet regulator, still waiting on trouble free report before I publish the results as the 1st rotor caused other problems. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by batman on 08/05/19 at 08:18:05 Failure of a reg/rec Is not something that is going to happen overnight , I wouldn't even go so far as to say that because in the example I showed that had to shunt 3 times as much power that it means the thing will die 3 times sooner ,just that when you start adding LED's conditions change a bit faster than you might be aware of . You might consider for a moment ,what the extent would be if you change your whole lighting system to LED' s. Vercy's move to a mosfet reg. decreased his risk by 50% , adding a few running lights to your bike ,could do the same. My bike is 24 years old , did the reg. die from mileage or old age? Either way I'm not complaining. It's just like the petcock or plug leak , If you keep the bike long enough it's going to die ,you just have no clue as to when. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by justin_o_guy2 on 08/05/19 at 11:15:43 The fins are for dumping heat. If I was concerned about the rectifier I'd look at directing air at it and maybe adding some heat sink in the mix. IDK if Suzuki used the heat conducting paste under the rectifier, but getting some of that and pulling the rectifier off the fender, cleaning up the surfaces and reinstalling with the paste could help it stay cooler. As it heats up, that increases resistance, which causes more heat. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by zipidachimp on 08/05/19 at 23:45:05 bolted my rectifier to a thick block of aluminum, bolted the block to the frame using the fender bolt holes. no fender. 8-) |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by batman on 08/08/19 at 09:47:40 You also have to take into account that the reg/ rec is always emitting heat when the bike is running . The process of changing AC to DC current suffers losses of up to 25% ,which are also released as heat. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by hotrod on 08/08/19 at 11:39:58 I was thinking of mounting it under the headlight and running longer wires. Never liked it under the seat. It would also make more room for the soft saddle bag attachment under the seat. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by Gary_in_NJ on 08/08/19 at 19:15:44 Wattage is a factor of voltage, current and resistance W = V x I W = I2 x R W = V2 / R Just because the stator is able to put out a fixed amount of power doesn’t mean that heat is being created during periods of low current. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by batman on 08/08/19 at 20:45:58 What periods of low current (amps) are you talking about ? the minute the bike starts it draws 7.5+ just to keep running , not counting the amps used to recharge the battery you just drew down to run the starter The power being put out by the stater is AC the rectifier changes it to DC ,that's when the heat is released , up to25 % of the power is lost to heat in the conversion. Research a full wave bridge rectifier and learn how it works, and that is before extra power used fully charges the battery and is shunted to ground (more heat) Our alternator has permanent magnets if it's turning it's generating , the only time there is a slight reduction of power is at lower rpms, and a slight increase at higher rpms . 100 volts AC at 5000 rpm is merely a test point , I doubt most of us ride at 5000 rpm that would be equal to 75 mph. There are no periods of low current. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by verslagen1 on 08/08/19 at 21:39:18 GDit! don't give me any ideas@! |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by Bubba on 08/09/19 at 09:13:22 I'm glad I checked in today. I was just thinking of installing a new LED headlight bulb...possible a tailight too but not blinkers. Would just the headlight/tailight in LED cause a problem for me? thx |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by kamelryttarn on 08/09/19 at 09:25:35 My plan was to make some measurements yesterday but my battery was not properly charged so I had to wait until today to start it. Not sure I got the range for the clamp meter correct but it doesn't really matter since the main question is IF there is a larger load on the regulator or maybe even alternator when using LED lights and here are the numbers with the headlight off |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by kamelryttarn on 08/09/19 at 09:26:49 And here are the numbers when I switched the head light on. I must confess I am not sure if my high beam was on |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by kamelryttarn on 08/09/19 at 09:29:40 From my previous calibration of the three phase current transformer I can say with some degree of certainty and accuracy that the amperage going through the three wires when the light was of, was about 11.3 A and with the light on it was about 12.2 A It does not seem to hurt the regulator to use LED lights if I interpret the results correctly Here is a picture of my setup |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by kamelryttarn on 08/09/19 at 09:35:27 To explain the different oscilloscope channels and number: CH1 was connected between the negative terminal of the battery and the red wire coming from the regulator CH2 is the clamp meter to measure the DC current going through the red wire from the alternator CH3-5 are the three AC phases from the alternator. Each of the three current transformers are connected directly to a schottky bridge rectifier and then a burden resistor of 100 Ohm. What the display shows is the mV output over the burden resistor so 420mV over the 100 Ohm resistor equals 4.2 mA and since I have calibrated the setup (not with 100% accuracy) with another clamp meter I know roughly what current is going through the cables. Here is closeup of the current transformer and the clamp meter |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by kamelryttarn on 08/09/19 at 09:37:59 Please let me know if you would like me to check anything else since I left everything connected so it's easy for me to change range, time base or whatever you want. I should also say the the value for voltage was "mean value", the value for current from the clamp meter was peak if I'm not mistaken and the value displayed for CH3 and CH4 was peak since that is how I made the initial calibration |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by DragBikeMike on 08/09/19 at 17:29:56 Kamelryttarn, that is an impressive array of instrumentation. Thanks for taking the time to dig into the system and share the results. I wish I was smart enough to understand all this electrical stuff. Myself, I don't trust electrons. They're sneaky little devils. I mean, like, have you ever seen an electron? ;) I guess its good to have a handle on current and wattage and voltage, and just what those values are doing under varying operating conditions, but it seems to me that the original question centered around elevated temperature resulting from the regulator dumping more energy. My bike is currently engineless. If it was operational, I would do a simple test to determine if the regulator ran hotter when the headlight was disconnected. Start the test with the regulator at ambient temperature. Take the three 6mm bolts out of the seat, put the seat in place, and go for a ride of predetermined length & speed & time. Pop the seat off and shoot the regulator with an IR thermometer. Let it cool down until the regulator is back at ambient. Disconnect the headlight. Then repeat the test ride (same length, speed, time). Pop the seat off and shoot the regulator with the same IR thermometer. Did it run hotter, the same, or cooler? Of course, if it runs hotter with the light disconnected, we will be faced with the question "how hot is too hot?". |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by kamelryttarn on 08/09/19 at 22:13:57 My situation is a bit complicated. Since I don't have a motorcycle drivers license I am not allowed to take my bike out for a ride solo. I need to have an instructor with me until I finish my education and get my license. I can tinker with the bike all I want. The fact that the current flowing through the circuit is lower when the system load is lower (when the lights are turned off) indicates that the heat buildup which is basically what kills the regulator is also lower meaning that converting the bike to LED would actually PROLONG the life of the voltage regulator and I would suspect even the alternator. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by Dave on 08/10/19 at 04:05:06 697B6B3938687E6B6A0C0 wrote:
Not sure that scenario is what actually happens - the current understanding is as follows (and it may be innaccurate). The output from the rotor/stator is dependent only on engine rpm.....it makes low amperage at low rpm and more amperage as the RPM increases. The rectifier/regulator converts that power from AC to DC, and then regulates the voltage and current that goes to the battery and electrical system. Excess power is run to a resistor in the regulator/rectifier and burned off as heat. The belief is that reducing the electrical demand increases the amount of power that needs to be disposed of as heat......and if too much power is diverted the regulator/rectifier may suffer an early demise. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by kamelryttarn on 08/10/19 at 05:26:47 I concur that the power goes up with RPM (as does the frequency) but everything points to the current being lower with a LED light than incandescent that draws more power I still believe that even at high rpms LEDs are preferable to traditional bulbs. Switching losses at the higher frequencies also increases so if life expectancy of the regulator is of concern, I think I would recommend keeping rpms low. It would probably also be possible to lighten the load by putting power resistors on the three leads coming from the stator to form sort of a voltage divider to lower the voltage even more but then one would have to make sure there is still enough juice left to charge the battery AND power all the electronics satisfactory. Is it possible/safe to run the bike with the alternator not connected to the regulator? If so, I could measure the maximum voltage from the alternator and perhaps figure out a reasonable resistor value to try with. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by batman on 08/10/19 at 08:53:19 logic tells me all you really need to do is stop over engineering the subject , and cut to the chase! Go buy a Laser pointing infrared distance reading thermometer ,($15.00 on line) .Start the bike with the headlight on , carefully disconnect the positive cable to the battery to stop any flow that may go to recharging it . and take a reading off the fins of the reg/rec , after that simply disconnect the headlight(remove it) and take the reading again, if the temperature increases my theory is correct, if it decreases( BUT IT WONT) start slapping LED's on your bike with careless abandon .(K.I.S.S.) Can you disconnect the stater from the rectifier with the bike running? If you have to ask your in trouble ! the answer of course is yes , that's how you test it ,100volts AC @ 5000rpm if it's good. 3 reading between each two leads.Sorry but your assumption that using LED's will not lead to shunting more power and more heat are incorrect Let's me be clear ,I never said LED's were not good, if they provide better lighting than standard lights . It's just that our regulators don't prefer the extra heat. Resistance causes heat . There are no resistors INSIDE the regulator. The shunted power is sent to the body /fins directly . The body of the reg. being Iron based conducts , but has a much higher resistance to flow than the copper, thus the power is converted to heat on it path to ground (bolted to the steel fender).The more power sent ,the more heat dispersed , there is no need for any kind of variable resistor. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by batman on 08/11/19 at 14:29:40 "The fact that the current flowing through the circuit is lower when the system load is lower (when the lights are turned off) indicates that the heat buildup which is basically what kills the regulator is also lower " NO, it means that the steady current put out by the rec/reg is not all being used by the bike's electrical system, the 4.5 amps normally used by the headlight is already being shunted to ground , causing the heat in the regulator to be higher. An LED headlight drawing 1.25 to 1.50 amps will in fact increase the heat given off . the fact that when you turned the headlight on. the amps only increased from 11.3 to 12.2 shows a 0.9 increase in amp, .9 amps x 14 volt =12.6 watts to light a 55 watt headlight ? shows your testing to be somewhat flawed. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by justin_o_guy2 on 08/11/19 at 17:22:25 What do we know? The regulator has fins for shedding heat. Some regulators fail. Why not increase the heat sinking capabilities of it? If you're concerned about it. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by batman on 08/11/19 at 18:52:00 Jog , I already did ,Use of an R/R with Mosfet tech will reduce the heat by up to 50%, it will last longer than a stock one even if you change to LED's on the entire bike. I believe I covered it all when I started this topic, there were a few nonbelievers that could have done a bit of research on line ,found out that I knew want I was talking about and this wouldn't have run to 2 pages |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by kamelryttarn on 08/11/19 at 23:59:09 @batman: Your assumption that the generator or regulator/rectifier always supplies a fixed amount of current and that somehow it must go to either a load such as a light or be shunted of as heat is incorrect. The increase of 12.6 watts might be due to the battery. We get power from two different sources in this case and as I said I am not 100% sure I got the range setting on that channel correct. I wasn't looking to get the exact DC current but rather an indication on whether the current was higher or lower. A chain is never stronger than its weakest link and in the case of the alternator and the regulator I would think the weaker of the two is the regulator. I have read about more cases of failed regulator than failed stator but if you install a MOSFET regulator it might very well be that you shift the balance so you fry the stator before the regulator. I believe that the stator is more difficult to replace than the regulator. The main reason a modern MOSFET regulator creates less heat is due the extremely low internal resistance of the mosfet transistor. A good modern mosfet has an internal resistance of only a few mOhms creating a very low voltage drop and therefore little heat. Removing the battery from the electrical system while the engine is running is NOT something I would recommend anyone to do. The battery provides some filtration of the voltage and also a kind of base line. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by Armen on 08/12/19 at 03:57:49 Seems a few of you are thinking too much. Permanent magnet alternator: Magnet of a fixed strength (as opposed to an excited rotor alternator), spinning past a fixed set of windings. Faster the magnet spins, the more amperage is produced. If the amperage isn't used, the R/R turns it into heat. More heat=dead sooner. Take a look at the VFR Honda and SV Suzuki pages for discussions of the early demise of their R/Rs ad nauseam. Solution-bigger R/R or, better cooling (out in the open for the SVs, put a fan on it for the VFRs). If the system generates 100 watts that aren't used, you have a 100 watt toaster oven. Think less, do more. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by batman on 08/12/19 at 06:23:21 Kameleyttary, In your world , the sun travels around the earth, and the earth is flat. Electricity is created by a metal passing through a magnetic field (as basic as it gets!) the magnetic field strength in the motorcycle is fixed , the field magnets are not electromagnets like are found in cars, therefore the output of the stator IS fixed . the word shunt = bypass , any extra power IS shunted to ground and released as heat. the truth IS the truth , if you choose not to believe it ,So be it! The MASS of the battery does tend to stabilize the voltage coming from the regulator, but can be disconnected because the alternator always produces more power than the bike uses to run and shunts the rest. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by verslagen1 on 08/12/19 at 07:25:16 Quote:
https://mosfet-regulator.com/79_how-does-a-mosfet-regulator-work.html I guess that explains the little spikes. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by philthymike on 08/12/19 at 20:33:06 Please consider this... https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/144607/do-mosfets-have-voltage-drop-across-source-and-drain-when-turned-on Under certain load or gate current conditions the variable resistance of a MOSFET can be worse than the forward voltage drop of a BJT junction - transistor, diode, SCR etc. So essentially its as load dependent as whatever is already there now. It's not a question of which is better but which has been better utilized by the engineers who designed it. With no load the regulator generates higher heat. But LEDs are a load. They dump heat too. Hence heatsinks and cooling fans. If you have enough LEDs to equal the same load from the incandescent lighting the regulator could care less. Its not shouldering the burden itself. It's like a scale balance. Load one side with a quarter ounce and the other with half it swings to the half side. Increase the other side by a quarter and it balances out. Put all the weight on one side and none on the other and crash. Catastrophic heat death. ::) |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by philthymike on 08/12/19 at 20:51:17 You could replace the battery with a large value capacitor as long as you didn't mind push starting the bike. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by batman on 08/12/19 at 21:28:36 Or we could just crank it over like a model T ::) |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by verslagen1 on 08/12/19 at 21:56:56 I replaced my Rectifier with a Mosfet For Honda VT1300CT Must have the marking FH008 (or larger) on it or it's not a MOSFET. There are others out there, it was the 1st/cheapest I could find at the time. It has 5 wires, just cut off the connectors and splice it into the savage connectors. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by batman on 08/14/19 at 05:32:43 Earlier Dave said ,that he had converted to LED's completely and that he had 10,000 miles on his bike without a problem , as I thought about it ,it dawned on me that he hasn't and wont ,have any higher risk than what would be found on a stock bike . Dave is shunting no more heat than a stock bike ,even with the use of LED's because of his use of kawa pulleys and 18" rear wheel , has changed the speed the alternator and it's output, that is very close to his reduction in electrical load. |
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Title: Re: The health of your regulator/rectifier with LE Post by Dave on 08/14/19 at 06:30:21 7370657C707F2529110 wrote:
I don't tour on this bike....it can't haul luggage and the seat is not one you care to sit on for extended periods. I have ridden it all day long when we go on rides in the mountain - but we stop every hour or so to get fuel or find out why we are lost! I spend most of my time between 3,000 - 3,500 rpm on my back road rides. On the highway 60 mph is 3,500 rpm and 70mph is 4,000 rpm in high gear....I don't spend too much time on the highway and only use it to get to other county roads with hills and curves. My LED headlight is a Cyclops and requires 32 watts. |
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