'77 kz1000 charging problem?

[81xsproject]

I am still fighting my buddies '77kz1000. I am starting to hate this bike. Anyway I hooked up the voltometer to the battery the other day and it showed just between the "bad" and "good" battery marks. That didn't seem right for a brand new battery so I left it hooked up while I fired it up. When I did, the needle didn't go up at all even when I reved the idle up. Could the stator be no good?

[LoserShoes]

The first thing ya gotta do, if you haven't already, is find and clean all the grounds. That usually helps alot. After that you'll need an ampmeter to trouble shoot the charging circuit.

Steve

[prometheus578]

"A thousand questions"

I seem to 'member someone, could have been you, asking about a charging problem on a KZ thousand a while back. I did a quick search, but couldn't locate the post.
Did have several in the shop last year for charging, but can't 'member the specifics. ... do recall that we didn't have a manual on the machines, so can't give you any tech specs. to check for. All were either the rectifier or the stator coil. Unfortunetely, some were not total failures... meaning that they would put out to some degree, but just not enough... and then not knowing just how much was good enough, were hard to pin down the prob.
Ended up just buying a rectifier for the shop and plugging it in. If it then charged, the rectifier was bad, if it didn't, then it was the stator.
'course, that doesn't help you too much.
Like Losershoes stated, clean all the grounds, and check the wire connections in the harness from the stator. I've found those to be fried and making poor connections.
Pop the cover offa the charging coil and see if any of the wire looms look burnt. That's a good indication, but they can look burnt and still be good.

[Geezer]

Unplug the wires from the stator and there should be 3 yellow wires. You should get about .5 to 1.5 ohms resistance between them and infinite to ground. If this tests OK the next step is to clean all the electrical connections in the charging system (if not the whole bike) and coat the terminals with dielectric grease. This fixes it about half the time and the rest of the time it’s the regulator/rectifier unit.

Geezer

[81xsproject]

I now know that I have a bad rectifier. My question is, could that make the bike run crappy?

[GNEPIG]

.. only if the battery voltage is real low or if the stator is rubbing on the rotor

[Geezer]

Originally posted by 81xsproject
I now know that I have a bad rectifier. My question is, could that make the bike run crappy?

Fully charge the bike and if it runs great for about an hour until the battery runs down, yes. Otherwise no.

BTW, you can find rectifier testing instructions here. http://www.OregonMotorcycleParts.com/FAQ.html

Geezer