imtryin

well, my earthing is good. ive checked and checked and re checked. i ordered a new field coil, and installed it today, and that being the last thing besides the rotor to replace i was hoping for the best. after i put the field coil in, the bike started popping the main fuse, over and over went through 6 fuses. what i found out though was when i unplugged the field coil and turned the bike to on position it wouldn't pop the fuse. so i took the stator and field coil out, and put them back in. not popping fuses anymore, but still not charging. and now the voltage isn't moving at all when i rev the bike. also, i know i did a bad thing but i ran the bike with out the stator wires plugged in. for about 10 seconds maybe. whats the ramifications? any other idea? could the rotor go bad? how? is there any way to check it? thanks

You might not be up for this, but... i had never done any motorcycle electrical, and my 81 xs400 was having almost identical issues. one thing i did was i pulled the entire wiring harness from the bike, which was surprisingly easy. maybe about 45 mins. to pull it out and about 20 to put it back in. I labeled each component connector with a sharpie component side, and harness side for reference. I laid the harness out on a bench and i went through the whole thing with an ohmmeter, took a couple of hours but i ended up finding a few bad connections. soldered em back together, and sprayed out all of the connection ends with auto electrical cleaner harness side and component side(any auto parts store) and put the harness back in the bike. Re ran all my grounds and used new screws. Magically the bike came to life. mostly i'm trying to tell you not to be too intimidated by the wiring, a good diagram and a methodical mind and you can get it. good luck buddy!

So i have been actively scanning this site for info that would help with this head scratcher that i have going through for a few months now. so far i haven't found anyone Else's thread that has shed any light. The bike: Recently the bike has slowly been holding less and less of a charge, until one day the bike dies on me. I pushed it back to the house and threw the battery on the voltmeter, and it was totally dead, considering the battery was 5 years old i decided to replace it. Brand new battery and no luck 20 minutes of riding and the bikes dead again. So i took it home charged it up and started the bike, i tested the alternator out put. 11.9 volts at idle and i can get it up to 12.4 at 5 grand. So i went through and started bench testing all the components; regulator, rectifier, and stator. all three were a bit out of spec, not terrible though. i decided to start by replacing the regulator and rectifier with an aftermarket combination regulator/rectifier.no luck, The bike was putting out jut the same voltage 11.9-12.4 . i replaced the stator (used stator), same thing. now all components bench test right where they are supposed to, and still not charging. I also did resistance testing on almost all of the wires in the harness between all of the charging components. everything came out good. Any ideas? new rotor maybe? how likely would it be that i needed a new rotor? The bikes only got 8000 miles on it. since this bike has no brushes it needs the battery to excite the stator coil, correct? and if so could a faulty new battery be the cause of this? I've been doing my homework, and I'm stuck. THANKS!!!!