A Run to Church and Charging Problems

It was a lovely day on Sunday.  Temperatures up to 16 or 17 deg C.  So the bike came out and we went for a spin in the lovely Kent (UK) countryside.  I always wanted to stop and look at the church at Godmersham so I thought I would pay my respects.

I was very lucky that this church was at the top of hill.  After driving for an hour and stopping for 10 minutes, I went to start the bike and ..........

SCREAM !!!

The battery was almost dead.  Oh no not the dreaded stator / regulator / rectifier problem.  All Suzuki GS bikes eventually succumb.

I managed to roll down the hill and start the bike before I hit the main road by putting it in 2nd gear and bumping it.  And furthermore, I managed to get the 5 miles home without it cutting out on me.

A huge feeling of dread engulfed me; I was going to have to read the Stator Papers.  This is a monumentally exhaustive set of papers about how the Suzuki stators (generators) work, why they fail and how to fix them.  Anything electrical gives me a headache.  This was not going to be very much fun. 

I started on the Stator Tests (click to enlarge):

All I could get on this set of tests was a steady 13.4 volts when engine off and the same when it ran - whatever revs it was at.  So I went onto section B of the Stator Tests:

 

I am not a proficient multi-meter user (much prefer the old ones with a gauge) so I get confused with settings, which holes to plug the leads in, which is + and which is - and the difference between a reading of 1 and a reading of -1.  I couldn't get any readings to work on this test so I immediately assumed the stator was toast.

I am privileged to own 2 Suzuki GS1100Gs so my reasoning went that I could at least switch stators or use the other one as a test rig.  So I took them both out of their motors.

The one on the right is original (I know because I have had the bike since new) and the one on the left looks like it has a different (replacement?) type of stator installed.

And I did all the tests again.  I started on the one I knew was good.

 And then tested the other one I suspected had failed.

Having not got readings like this whilst the suspect stator was on the bike, I was surprised to find that all the readings were around 0.9 which is well with the prescribed range 0.5 to 2 ohms.  Don't know why it wasn't looking like that when it was on the bike.  Perhaps I had the wrong multi-meter setting or I wasn't getting a good connection.

So now it looks like the stator is OK. I would still like to see the thing kick out some volts when it was running to completely convince me though.  Before I put it back in  I will move onto the regulator/rectifier.