charging system
Before messing with stator, make sure battery is UP for the job it has, put on trickle charger.
A battery tender is the best, H-D has one that puts out 3/4 of an amp or 750 mili-amps and will
have battery topped off, put on charger for a few days if it had some charge to it, the tender
should have it topped off to 100% or pretty close.
Then bring battery to a bike shop an pay a few $$ to have them do a
'LOAD TEST' or if you have one, the meter an heater coil type with the 3 bands of color red/yellow/green.
use as tester says, if needle goes well into green, that is nice BUT it is the 2nd test that really makes a
difference, if needle stays well into green, I'd keep the battery BUT if it goes into or hugs the yellow or goes
somewhat closer to it, Then come back slowly to green that is, to me anyways, NOT indicative of a
dependable battery.
If the battery showed up as 'Good' on the load tester, start bike and take note as to how it sounds when being
cranked and how long before it fires. My wide glide with the 103 engine and a new battery would take about
4 or 5 seconds to start, with the battery on a tender though, it took half that time, meaning it 'whipped right
over, like with no effort.check voltage across battery, it should be close to 14 volts hopefully above by a few
tenths
If the charge voltage is not much above battery when bike is running, it could be the R/R is defective, this
can go both ways, not enough volts to charge or too many, for the most part 15 volts is high so anything
over that is going to put extra stress on lamps and on-board computer which would most likely cause an
'electrical troubles lamp' to come on anyway, due to low charging volts or hi charging volts. If there is NO
difference in voltage with bike running, than I would say there is a battery charging fuse that went bad
I'd say if volts are high, 15 or above, r/r is most likely messing up but stator is good as a stator with a
shorted or grounded winding would put out less than what service manual says it should for the rpm.
SO, to check stator, unplug from regulator and do an ohm test to ground, if you have continuity, the stator
winding is BAD and must be replaced. Now, there are two types of stator, single phase 2 wire, or 3 phase
3 wire, continuity to ground in either type is no good.
IF there are no shorts to ground, check a.c. voltage to see if it complies with service manual.If a.c. volts
are what manual says they should be, than it is the R/R. that is highly likely to have failed.
For a single phase winding, two leads from stator, on my Sporty1200, H-D says between 19 to 26 volts a.c.
per 1000 rpm so at 2,000 rpm I should get between 38 to 52 volts, so I'd suspect a.c. volts in this range on
other bikes with this type of stator would likely give good results.
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