Wires on fire

[fredintoon]

Try this?

fredintoon, the wires stay cool with the key on but heat up when it starts. That lead me to believe that it is in the charging system as well. I tried to narrow the search but it is many different wires that get hot.. That makes it hard to get a bead on it. I have looked for the pinched or shorted-out wire to no avail. I am about to go and see if I can do a bit more searching.

Hi Brandon,
what I'd try first is to unplug the regulator/rectifier and fire it up. The bike won't charge but if the wires stay cool it's the reg/rect or it's wiring that's heating them up. Still hot? Next is to unplug the wires from the stator and from the inner electromagnet. It still won't charge and the electromagnet will not pull a feeler gauge towards the alternator. If it runs cool then it's for sure something in the generating system what's doing it. Then go over each and every wire with a multi-meter set on the Ohms scale. You should be able to get one probe on one end connector or the other of each wire and look for a circuit to the ground from each of them. Then check for a short from wire to wire.

[dovecustoms]

Dumb Question

Fredintoon,
I did run the bike with the reg/rect unpluged. The wires stayed cool as a well digger's &%$. Does that mean that the part is bad?
I started going over each wire with the multimeter but I guess the battery went down. But before it did, I checked the voltage of the battery and it was 11.13v until I hit the starter and it dropped to 9.34.
So, to my dumb question.... could my problem be just a battery? If the battery never gets to the right voltage, would it cause the wires to overheat trying to charge a faulty battery?
Upon visual inspection, I find no fault with the wiring. I replaced a few of the blade connectors that had gotten really hot, I cleaned all of the connections and applied the dieletric grease to every one. I wrapped the wires that had melted insulation and hooked it all back up.
If there are any ideas, please let me know.
Thanks

[fredintoon]

Hi Brandon,
I doubt that a low battery would overheat the reg/rect wiring.
Try running the bike from your car battery via jumper cables and see what happens.
There are tests you can do with a multimeter to see if your reg/rect is working or not.
Go through this list's tech files to see if you can find them. All I know is that the tests specified in Clymer's don't tell you squat.
If it turns out that your reg/rect really is fried, PM Andreas Weiss about a used replacement or PM Geezer about one of his upgraded units.