Generator Wiring Help

[spayne83]

I am trying to fix the wiring harness on my 79 Special and I am having a hell of a time matching the wiring on the bike with the wiring diagrams. The wiring was seriously messed up when I got the bike and I am just trying to make it right so I can start the bike. It seems to be somewhere between the SF wiring diagram in Clymer and the 1100E diagram from the factory manual.

Anyway, I have two wires coming from the generator, one green and one black. All of the wiring diagrams show that it should be green and brown. The green wire goes to the rectifier/regulator, so the question is where does the black wire go? The brown wire from the rectifier/regulator goes from the connector back to tie in with the other brown wires that go directly to the fuse box. From the wiring diagrams this is wrong, but I think that that was a factory connection, however I can't be certain.

[BA80]

There should be 3 white wires, a green wire and a tan wire coming from the generator. All go to the regulator/rectifier. That black one probably used to be tan or someone changed it.

There should be plugs on them that match up. The harness will have an extra smaller yellow wire in the plug the 3 whites go into, pay no attention to it.

[crazy steve]

The tan wire goes numerous places...

Yes, the green goes directly to the regulator. The tan wire should go to the regulator and the field coil, but also goes to the ignition switch and fuse panel, and is the main 'switched' power. There is no black wire coming 'from' the alternator (there is a black ground wire at the regulator), so that may be the tan. Check for continuity between the 'black' and green, you should have 3.5 ohms between them. Both should be 'open' to ground (pull all the fuses so you don't read through other circuits).

[bikerphil]

The yellow wire on the 78-79 bikes is used to trip the headlight relay, it is not used on the 80-81 bikes although the wire is still present.

[GLoweVA]

The yellow wire on the 78-79 bikes is used to trip the headlight relay, it is not used on the 80-81 bikes although the wire is still present.

Just to clarify it a little bit for me, Phil, you're talking about the wires from the stator right?
I searched the parts list and from 78-81 all used the same stator, thus the 3 white and 1 yellow from it going to the bike's harness, but the 80-81's didnt' use the yellow, but instead tapped off one of the white in the harness and put in a diode to the headlight relay.

I learn something new about these bikes everyday.

So now I'm going to look to see if my bikes have that yellow wire at the plug behind the fuse block where the stator wires plugs into the bike harness.

[bikerphil]

Yes, the yellow wire from the stator was used on the 78-79 bikes to trip the HL relay, the 80-81 used one of the white wires to do so.