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Post by lain on Mar 19, 2015 16:13:54 GMT -5
Not sure what is causing this issue. I went for a ride last night and noticed my headlight was USELESS on a street that had no street lights. I also noticed when I would use my brake the headlight would dim to pretty much nothing but the brake light would be bright. The bulb angle is perfect, and when I use the passing light (high beam powered by battery) it shines nice and bright like how it used to when running before this issue came up.
The power from the stator appears to be good, power from the battery obviously good. The power to the dash also seems to dim when I hit the brake as well. Maybe a loose wire, but which wire would be responsible for the power going to the headlights and the brake lights and wouldn't dim both?
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Post by scooter on Mar 19, 2015 17:11:39 GMT -5
Not sure what is causing this issue. I went for a ride last night and noticed my headlight was USELESS on a street that had no street lights. I also noticed when I would use my brake the headlight would dim to pretty much nothing but the brake light would be bright. The bulb angle is perfect, and when I use the passing light (high beam powered by battery) it shines nice and bright like how it used to when running before this issue came up. The power from the stator appears to be good, power from the battery obviously good. The power to the dash also seems to dim when I hit the brake as well. Maybe a loose wire, but which wire would be responsible for the power going to the headlights and the brake lights and wouldn't dim both? Is there a ground wire that leads up front from the battery? I had a bad ground. It wasn't visible in the wire but the meter said voltage was low. When I changed the wire, it worked great. |
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Post by bashan on Mar 19, 2015 19:36:32 GMT -5
What kind of stator do you have.....three phase or GYW?
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Post by lain on Mar 19, 2015 20:01:43 GMT -5
Not sure what is causing this issue. I went for a ride last night and noticed my headlight was USELESS on a street that had no street lights. I also noticed when I would use my brake the headlight would dim to pretty much nothing but the brake light would be bright. The bulb angle is perfect, and when I use the passing light (high beam powered by battery) it shines nice and bright like how it used to when running before this issue came up. The power from the stator appears to be good, power from the battery obviously good. The power to the dash also seems to dim when I hit the brake as well. Maybe a loose wire, but which wire would be responsible for the power going to the headlights and the brake lights and wouldn't dim both? Is there a ground wire that leads up front from the battery? I had a bad ground. It wasn't visible in the wire but the meter said voltage was low. When I changed the wire, it worked great. I have a wire that goes from my battery to the frame like a couple inches away from the battery compartment which is under the floorboard. I suppose I should hook up a negative to the frame in the front as well. I am unsure as to what kind of stator it is. I have an 8 pole gy6 AC stator. I know the stator itself and the pickup are in good condition, and are relatively new. I installed it around the same time I installed my BBK. |
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Post by scooter on Mar 19, 2015 21:37:13 GMT -5
Is there a ground wire that leads up front from the battery? I had a bad ground. It wasn't visible in the wire but the meter said voltage was low. When I changed the wire, it worked great. I have a wire that goes from my battery to the frame like a couple inches away from the battery compartment which is under the floorboard. I suppose I should hook up a negative to the frame in the front as well. I am unsure as to what kind of stator it is. I have an 8 pole gy6 AC stator. I know the stator itself and the pickup are in good condition, and are relatively new. I installed it around the same time I installed my BBK. The frame should be good enough for a ground. If you feel your low beam is not good and your high beam is working well, then that would leave one or two wires coming from your low beam light to check out. Try bypassing one of the wires. If you have one ground for both lights then try bypassing the low beam positive wire by running it to the battery with another wire. If that does nothing then maybe it's your bulb. If it fixes the problem then look at the positive wire back to the handlebar switch and on to the battery. If the high and low are both dim then you might try bypassing your ground wire. |
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Post by lain on Mar 19, 2015 22:00:45 GMT -5
I have a wire that goes from my battery to the frame like a couple inches away from the battery compartment which is under the floorboard. I suppose I should hook up a negative to the frame in the front as well. I am unsure as to what kind of stator it is. I have an 8 pole gy6 AC stator. I know the stator itself and the pickup are in good condition, and are relatively new. I installed it around the same time I installed my BBK. The frame should be good enough for a ground. If you feel your low beam is not good and your high beam is working well, then that would leave one or two wires coming from your low beam light to check out. Try bypassing one of the wires. If you have one ground for both lights then try bypassing the low beam positive wire by running it to the battery with another wire. If that does nothing then maybe it's your bulb. If it fixes the problem then look at the positive wire back to the handlebar switch and on to the battery. If the high and low are both dim then you might try bypassing your ground wire. Well, I have the bulb rewired to allow me to power the bulb by either the stator or the battery seperately. There is only one negative ground wire to the bulb. I have a switch in between the low beam positive and the bulb. The switch is hooked up to the low beam wire and the high beam wire on the bulb harness. Putting the switch in the middle turns the light off, turning it to the left or right connects the low beam power from the stator to the low or high beam individually. The light controls on the handlebar still function as normal, and only when I use the passing light button does it power the headlight bulb from the battery, but is bright either low or high beam when powered by the battery. I am using a halogen bulb, not that it matters much, but it does not seem to be worn out or anything. It just seems like the power to the dash and bulb is not right... Could a bad rectifier cause these symptoms? The only symptom from a bad rectifier I ever got was the power to running lights and dash would not come through at all, but that is not the case here. |
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Post by scooter on Mar 20, 2015 5:06:38 GMT -5
The frame should be good enough for a ground. If you feel your low beam is not good and your high beam is working well, then that would leave one or two wires coming from your low beam light to check out. Try bypassing one of the wires. If you have one ground for both lights then try bypassing the low beam positive wire by running it to the battery with another wire. If that does nothing then maybe it's your bulb. If it fixes the problem then look at the positive wire back to the handlebar switch and on to the battery. If the high and low are both dim then you might try bypassing your ground wire. Well, I have the bulb rewired to allow me to power the bulb by either the stator or the battery seperately. There is only one negative ground wire to the bulb. I have a switch in between the low beam positive and the bulb. The switch is hooked up to the low beam wire and the high beam wire on the bulb harness. Putting the switch in the middle turns the light off, turning it to the left or right connects the low beam power from the stator to the low or high beam individually. The light controls on the handlebar still function as normal, and only when I use the passing light button does it power the headlight bulb from the battery, but is bright either low or high beam when powered by the battery. I am using a halogen bulb, not that it matters much, but it does not seem to be worn out or anything. It just seems like the power to the dash and bulb is not right... Could a bad rectifier cause these symptoms? The only symptom from a bad rectifier I ever got was the power to running lights and dash would not come through at all, but that is not the case here. I'm not knowledgeable about the rectifiers. Jerry may be able to help you with that. |
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Post by rdhood on Mar 20, 2015 6:51:01 GMT -5
I dont mean to sidetrack the discussion, but I noticed that my headlight dims when the brakes are applied as well. Is this typical?
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Post by lain on Mar 20, 2015 11:09:57 GMT -5
I dont mean to sidetrack the discussion, but I noticed that my headlight dims when the brakes are applied as well. Is this typical? No, the headlight and dash shouldn't dim from using the brake light. It only just started happening to me this week. Gonna check the wiring when I get home today and see if I can figure anything out. I was hearing what sounded like sparks come from inside the dash or fairing, so I'm starting to think that there may be a loose wire causing some sort of sparks or arcing, possibly a loose positive wire making contact with a ground wire... |
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Post by ricardoguitars on Mar 20, 2015 18:03:53 GMT -5
I had a similar problem on my car, the problem was that the alternator was not generating enough current and drained the battery. What's the voltage read on your battery? if it is lower than 12.5 volts with the engine on and the lights on, something is wrong with the generator.
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Post by lain on Mar 20, 2015 19:32:47 GMT -5
I had a similar problem on my car, the problem was that the alternator was not generating enough current and drained the battery. What's the voltage read on your battery? if it is lower than 12.5 volts with the engine on and the lights on, something is wrong with the generator. I don't think that is an issue for me. I've been checking to see if it's topped off with the battery charger like every day, and it keeps saying it's already full when I put it on the charger. And I do not seem to be having issues with the battery itself, however you may be onto something. I'm just not sure that the stator could be bad but also keep the battery charged if it were bad. |
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Post by rdhood on Mar 20, 2015 21:10:34 GMT -5
Ditto for me. No problem with the battery... the battery charger trips to maintenance in about 10 seconds. Maybe its a stator going bad or undersized for when everything is on? Should I put on a higher capacity stator?
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Post by lain on Mar 20, 2015 22:37:08 GMT -5
Ditto for me. No problem with the battery... the battery charger trips to maintenance in about 10 seconds. Maybe its a stator going bad or undersized for when everything is on? Should I put on a higher capacity stator? i have no idea if the cause of your problem is the same as mine, but my stator is new, still in great condition looks new still and everything. Plus the battery wouldn't charge if the stator was having issues giving power to the lights. The power that goes to the lights is the same power that goes to the charging system. It comes from the stator and is split to both the lights and the charging system from the same wire. If one was having issues it would be reasonable to believe that both of these would have issues. I just feel like I am missing something, and whatever I'm missing must be related to the issue. |
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Post by bashan on Mar 21, 2015 11:14:33 GMT -5
What I was asking is if your stator had a green yellow white (GYW) wire bundle or three yellows......sorry, I was vague.
Do you have a multi meter? You need to do some testing. If you have a GYW stator your headlight, and many other lights are AC off of the yellow. So if you have this configuration set your multi to AC with a range that will encompass about 50v AC. With the R/R hooked up, just like when you run the bike normally with the yellow supplying the headlight, touch a probe to an exposed spot on the yellow, even at the R/R connector, and then the other probe to a good frame spot. You should be getting around 12v AC or a little more with some RPM. If you get 12 then it's not the supply, it's the connectors, wires, or bulb.
If you don't get 12v AC then you need to test the stator. Unhook the pigtail on the stator. I'm still assuming GYW so put a probe in the yellow and ground the other probe. You should get around 20v AC with some RPM. If you don't it's your stator. If you do it's the R/R.
To test the DC side of the system set your multi to DC and check the battery terminals with some RPM, you should get 13 to 14.5v DC. If not check the white wire on the stator like you did the yellow, you should get about 40v AC. If you don't get 40 your charging problem is the stator, if you do get 40, it's the R/R. The white is dedicated to charging, the yellow is for lights.
It's been my experience that at low RPM the headlight will dim when hitting the brakes. The brakes are on the DC side and the headlight AC. However, the yellow is center tapped to the white so they pull voltage off of each other. Here is a diagram of a GYW system:
Sorry to ramble on, I'm waiting for a scooter to be delivered and I'm killing time. |
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Post by lain on Mar 21, 2015 12:02:46 GMT -5
What I was asking is if your stator had a green yellow white (GYW) wire bundle or three yellows......sorry, I was vague.
Do you have a multi meter? You need to do some testing. If you have a GYW stator your headlight, and many other lights are AC off of the yellow. So if you have this configuration set your multi to AC with a range that will encompass about 50v AC. With the R/R hooked up, just like when you run the bike normally with the yellow supplying the headlight, touch a probe to an exposed spot on the yellow, even at the R/R connector, and then the other probe to a good frame spot. You should be getting around 12v AC or a little more with some RPM. If you get 12 then it's not the supply, it's the connectors, wires, or bulb.
If you don't get 12v AC then you need to test the stator. Unhook the pigtail on the stator. I'm still assuming GYW so put a probe in the yellow and ground the other probe. You should get around 20v AC with some RPM. If you don't it's your stator. If you do it's the R/R.
To test the DC side of the system set your multi to DC and check the battery terminals with some RPM, you should get 13 to 14.5v DC. If not check the white wire on the stator like you did the yellow, you should get about 40v AC. If you don't get 40 your charging problem is the stator, if you do get 40, it's the R/R. The white is dedicated to charging, the yellow is for lights.
It's been my experience that at low RPM the headlight will dim when hitting the brakes. The brakes are on the DC side and the headlight AC. However, the yellow is center tapped to the white so they pull voltage off of each other. Here is a diagram of a GYW system:
Sorry to ramble on, I'm waiting for a scooter to be delivered and I'm killing time.I'm a bit confused with the diagram, what is R/R? The rectifier? I'm guessing it's that because I don't see rectifier on the diagram anywhere. My stator does not have a green wire (ground) instead it grounds through the bolts to the engine case. So I only have the yellow and white wires. I see what you're going for though. I should check the power supply for the lights to see if they have good enough voltage at low RPMs. I'll be checking it soon, I'm going to get lunch so might as well check the voltage as I warm up the engine. |
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