Winter project: upgrading time! (R6 forks and more...)

[Bjorn]

I've just performed a test with a additional battery for just the ignition system.

I tested both scenarios with the common ground and without.

Results:
- Running fine with the R/R disconnected.
- running shit with R/R connected WITH common ground.
- running shit with R/R connected WITHOUT common ground.

Was also happy I got a kill switch now!! Never thought about turning the key and the bike would keep running haha.

 

[Jim]

Yeah I've red it too, however the guy on the tread I linked to this morning stated the following:

Yes, but he went with a rare earth magnet, which is much more powerful, so it's not really the same.

 

[Jim]

Curious... have you done a resistance check of your pickup... that or swapped it out?

 

[Bjorn]

Yes, but he went with a rare earth magnet, which is much more powerful, so it's not really the same.

A few weeks back I did some research about magnets. I made alloy drain plugs and want to fit a magnet to them.

In my search I remember that a lot of magnets are loosing most to all of the power above 80C. Only ferrite and some other one I forgot the name from will hold their power above this temperature.

Another thing you never read about is how long this magnet swap will last. Just saying that if it works for a month doesn't ensure It will last a year.

 

[Bjorn]

Jim about your measurements between the TCI and rotor. You say the distance between the rotor and stator is 10.17mm. yesterday I believe this was 9,6mm. Is that correct?

I'll to take some measurements here, I do need to take the stator of again ...

Will also double check that bit of wiring around the front sprocket..

Just checked the TCI pickup resistance. 2x 750 ohm. 1x 1500ish ohm.

 

[Bjorn]

Did some research regarding Stators this afternoon. It bothers me that basically everything thing on the bike is now newish. Except for the stator.

Called Carmo here in the Netherlands they offer a new replacement and rewinding services.
Gave them a call because I wanted more info. The new stator is not made by them but by Electrex in the UK. Same company that made the R/R.

I prefer rewinding, but they told me that they had "a guy" doing the rotor and stator rewinding. He just retired unfortunately.

The downside of their new stator is that it doesn't come assembled with the Alu carrier.

Based on the pictures it does appear that heiden sells the same unit however assembled. If I can't find anything I'm the next days I'll be buying that.

Hoping that throwing money at the thing will cure it lol

 

[Jim]

yesterday I believe this was 9,6mm. Is that correct?

That was someone else that measured. @gggGary maybe?

 

[Jim]

More thinkin' out loud....
What's the resistance of your rotor? I know some rewinders wind them low... like 4.5Ω's. That gives a bigger current draw... possible factor. I try to keep my rewinds at 5Ω or above.
Getting the windings to lay evenly next to each other is damn near impossible in a 450 turn winding. The first 200 or so are a piece of cake. It gets progressively harder after that. Still, random overlaps needs to be minimized as much as possible. That minimizes eddy currents in the magnetic field. Don't know for a fact, but I suspect a large eddy current might be seen by the pickup as excessive noise.

 

[Bjorn]

That was someone else that measured. @gggGary maybe?

Haha you are right! With this amount of messages it's hard to keep track. Got to say I really really appreciate the amount of collective troubleshooting we do here. Thanks guys!

 

[Bjorn]

More thinkin' out loud....
What's the resistance of your rotor? I know some rewinders wind them low... like 4.5Ω's. That gives a bigger current draw... possible factor. I try to keep my rewinds at 5Ω or above.
Getting the windings to lay evenly next to each other is damn near impossible in a 450 turn winding. The first 200 or so are a piece of cake. It gets progressively harder after that. Still, random overlaps needs to be minimized as much as possible. That minimizes eddy currents in the magnetic field. Don't know for a fact, but I suspect a large eddy current might be seen by the pickup as excessive noise.

Measuring just the rotor, the resistance is around 4 ohm. Could someone maybe explain why I measure 12 ohm on top of the brushes (R/R disconnected)?

Would like to see how that rewinding process works Jim! But I have no idea what eddy currents are...

I guess more windings is higher ohm resistance right? Why would you want lower or higher?

 

[Bjorn]

My buddy came up with the idea to unplug the stator and keep the brushes/rotor powered.

Is this save to do? And please let me know why, I don't fully understand how the 3 wires generate power with no ground.

 

[GLJ]

My
As much as I would like to know what the problem is at this point I would want to get it ride-able. I would get a Boyer for the ignition. They just work. Not going to debate the cons of cam timed ignition. The riding season is now! You can always play with it again next winter.

 

[Jim]

Measuring just the rotor, the resistance is around 4 ohm. Could someone maybe explain why I measure 12 ohm on top of the brushes (R/R disconnected)?

4Ω is lower than the factory spec of 5.2Ω. I know some rewinders use a larger gauge wire that gives about 4-4.5Ω. That means the current draw will be higher..... about 3A vs. the factory 2.5A I honestly don't know how that affects the pickup though.
I just checked my bike and across the brushes is about 24Ω. Usually just a brush will have about a half an ohm, reading end to end... so I'm not sure what that means... perhaps that just from dirty contact across the slip rings. That reminds me, clean your slip rings before you reinstall the rotor. I doubt it will help... but it doesn't hurt to try.

Would like to see how that rewinding process works Jim!

Rewinding ad....
http://www.xs650.com/threads/rewound-alternator-rotor.54276/
.... and the thread where I made all the tooling.
http://www.xs650.com/threads/rotor-winding-tooling.52632/
Not to jinks myself.... but I quit counting at around a hundred rewinds.... with zero reported failures so far.

But I have no idea what eddy currents are...

Think currents in a river. They flow evenly downstream.... unless disturbed by something... a sandbar, a pier piling. That causes the current to swirl and become uneven. Those are called eddy currents. Magnetism works exactly the same.

My buddy came up with the idea to unplug the stator and keep the brushes/rotor powered.

Is this save to do?

Yes, I'd say it's safe. Th generated a/c current will just stay in the stator... doing nothing. Don't see what that would hurt.

I don't fully understand how the 3 wires generate power with no ground.

Read comment #2 of my first link above.

 

[arcticXS]

My buddy came up with the idea to unplug the stator and keep the brushes/rotor powered.

Is this save to do? And please let me know why, I don't fully understand how the 3 wires generate power with no ground.

The 3 wires are 3 phase AC, and you should see (measure) the same AC voltage between any combination of them (A-B, A-C and B-C. In common electrical engineering, they would be called R, S, T) . As this is a common fault finding procedure, you should be safe to disconnect those 3 wires coming from the stator. And while you are at it, why not check the AC voltage. I would guess in the neighbourhood of 15-30 VAC. This 3 phase AC is then converted to DC in the rectifier part of your RR. In principle just 6 diodes.

 

[Bjorn]

Cool Jim, red the post. Nice to see somebody who knows what he's doing! And helping a community.

@arcticXS yes I checked this a couple of days ago! Don't think I mentioned it here but I was measuring 3x 11vAC. I believe this is decent. At least according to manual.

Now, this morning I did a base check. Just starting the bike without R/R: bike run fine.
Plugged in the R/R: bike runs fine. Love that intermitting aspect of it.

Shut the bike off, worked on increasing the wire thickness of the TCI ground (from 1mm² to 2mm²). Bolted everything up, started with the R/R plugged in: runs shit like the days before. Don't really feel like this last change is part of a cause and effect.

Anyway, next I unplugged the 3 stator wires from the connector but kept the rest of the connections (brushes and rotor and R/R) and tested the bike:
Runs good! I'll repeat this test a couple of times.

If this stays like it is, I'll get a new stator. Btw did not check the wires behind the sprocket just yet. But to recap, I measured the stator wires to eachother: all around 0,5ohm. No connection measured to earth.

 

[Bjorn]

O if we need to test more, I also happen to have two of these laying around:

Last year I red some about this, but until now totally forgot about it. Could someone point me in the forum direction where I can find the things I need to hook this up? Thanks

 

[arcticXS]

Cool Jim, red the post. Nice to see somebody who knows what he's doing! And helping a community.

@arcticXS yes I checked this a couple of days ago! Don't think I mentioned it here but I was measuring 3x 11vAC. I believe this is decent. At least according to manual.

Now, this morning I did a base check. Just starting the bike without R/R: bike run fine.
Plugged in the R/R: bike runs fine. Love that intermitting aspect of it.

Shut the bike off, worked on increasing the wire thickness of the TCI ground (from 1mm² to 2mm²). Bolted everything up, started with the R/R plugged in: runs shit like the days before. Don't really feel like this last change is part of a cause and effect.

Anyway, next I unplugged the 3 stator wires from the connector but kept the rest of the connections (brushes and rotor and R/R) and tested the bike:
Runs good! I'll repeat this test a couple of times.

If this stays like it is, I'll get a new stator. Btw did not check the wires behind the sprocket just yet. But to recap, I measured the stator wires to eachother: all around 0,5ohm. No connection measured to earth.

I do not see exactly how a new stator would solve your problem, unless it is those eddy currents Jim was talking about. At this stage of troubleshooting, I think hooking up an oscilloscope to the TCI sensor would make the most sense. To basically see what is going on.
BTW, if you were using a timing lamp when it was running poorly, what did you see? Timing jumping around, or missed sparks?

Otherwise, I tend to agree with GLJ. Get a Boyer, and go riding, If the alternator is charging as it should. I believe the Boyer has an actual timing curve, while the TCI only has two fixed timings, as far as I understand. And the Boyer doesn't need the centrifugal advance mechanism either.

 

[Bjorn]

Started the bike 3 times with only the stator leads disconnected from the connector: runs and starts fine.

Plugged the 3 stator wires back in: not running smooth.

Doesn't that point to the stator?

I mean, with the 3 stator leads disconnected power is still flowing to the brushes and magnetising that rotor right?

I don't have a scope.... And never used something like that.

Regarding the Boyer, maybe it's an option. It's just not really the route I want to take.... Everything on the bike is wired to run the original setup. Besides spending another 230 euro on a kit, I'm still left with this charging system.

All this BS kinda made me wish I swapped everything out for a complete new system like VAPE / powerdynamo.

Switching now cost a lot of money too, and more time to partially redo al the wiring

 

[arcticXS]

To me, it may be the stator, or the TCI pickup or its wiring. If you tested with the rotor exited ( RR connected, current flowing through brushes and rotor)

 

[Jim]

Before I forget, had a thought late last night.... my background is in aviation. Twisted pairs and twisted triples are used extensively on airplanes to reduce/eliminate noise in wire runs. It might be worth cutting the sheath off the pickup harness and twisting the wires together and replacing the sheath (heatshrink maybe). The theory behind it is any noise introduced will will affect all wires equally. Since one wire is positive and the other negative, the noise is canceled. I've seen many times where we got an EO (Engineering Order) to swap out a wire run with twisted pairs that fixed all manner of weird problems. Anyway.... back to your normally scheduled program.....

I do not see exactly how a new stator would solve your problem, unless it is those eddy currents Jim was talking about. At this stage of troubleshooting, I think hooking up an oscilloscope to the TCI sensor would make the most sense. To basically see what is going on.

I'm gonna agree with arctic. I don't really see how the stator could be causing the problem. But then, this ain't your normal run of the mill problem. Too bad you don't have a spare stator to just swap in temporarily to see what happens, but I'd hate to see you spend the money and find out it doesn't help. Who knows.... it's worth a shot at this point I guess. And yeah, a scope would be nice if only too see what kind of gremlin we're dealing with here. It's the intermittent nature of it that's confounding.

Last year I red some about this, but until now totally forgot about it. Could someone point me in the forum direction where I can find the things I need to hook this up? Thanks

The full story is here.
The short of it is you need to make this pigtail (jumper) harness. Other than possibly swapping trigger wires and adjusting timing, it's pretty much plug and play.