PMA wiring to stock harness - 1976 XS

My 76 Standard came to me with a Pamco and a PMA with battery installed. It started well, second kick, good as po deleted the starter, but the wiring was a bit tatty with some patches and the use of spade terminals instead of bullet terminals on some peripherals so to clean it up I got a repop harness from
650 Direct. Pretty much done and even verified it would still start fine, installed left side air box, went to the right side to repeat and ran my hand over the PMA wiring connector to regulator, felt a wire poke and ended up with the connector in my hand. Yes I should have seen that installing the harness, but my question is:

Factory connector's 3 white wires are plain white, white with blue stripe and white with red stripe. PMA's harness has 3 solid yellow wires instead of white, and I am ok with that, but none of them have any differentiation in the form of stripes. Does it not matter which of the yellow (white) feed wires connect to the different white wires going into the harness or do I have to trace back the wires in the PMA's harness to see their source and then match them up to the factory harness?

A better shot of the PMA wires. All of the wiring diagrams I have seen just show whites wires here, none with stripes.

It matters not. Connect any yellow wire to any of the white wires. Disregard the stripes that are there.
You're connecting 3 phase power from the stator to the input of a 3 phase rectifier. The order (phase relationship) does not matter, as it gets rectified to DC.
In industrial settings where 3 phase power to motors is very common, the phase relationship is very important. Connections at the motor must be connected correctly or the motor will rotate backwards, and the pump, fan or compressor will not work and may even cause damage.

Thank you from Ontario. That is precisely the info and the background to it I was hoping to get.

Glad to help....................I'm an Ontario guy myself. I spent 55 years in that part of the country.

+1 - the function of the three white - or yellow - wires is such that they cannot be connected wrong.

I haven't yet gone to the permanent magnet alternator (PMA) which replaces the stock brushed unit - but I have installed the rectifier/voltage regulator combo and it works great (certainly much better than the brushed unit which on my '75 B-model used to die every 7-9,000 miles like clockwork when I was riding it back in the 1970's).

As RetiredGentleman so clearly states, because the alternator is a three phase alternating current machine, the rectifier looks after the polarity issue and turns the three sinusoidal waves into direct current suitable for the rest of the bike's devices (battery, light, horn, starter, - whatever). The beauty of the combo unit is that it also regulates the voltage output level and all of that happens with solid state components. Those are nice because if they live for more than a few minutes, they will normally live forever. There is no wear-out or degradation in normal service - as long as you mount them in a place where the air can circulate and keep things cool.

Anyhow, I will install the PMA when I take the bike off the road for the winter (or what passes for winter in this part of Ontario).

Cheers,

Pete

Don't count on a mild winter 'til you get a green winter solstice!

Awww - c'mon man Be an optimist about the weather and other stuff - its part of being a Canadian.

Who knows, maybe the Leafs will show up this year.... Actually, my Mom's bridge club played them last week in a practice game and beat the snot out of them. I told the old gals to not run the score up - but do you think they'd listen?

Sorry - back to our regularly scheduled programming.....