Where are these orphans?

[fredintoon]

Still looking for the charging system fault on my XS11SG.
I have changed out the alternator windings & the regulator/rectifier plus the magnetizing coil sucks a .002" feeler gauge towards itself and still no tach reading & no voltage above the battery level.
Looking at a coloured wiring diagram for the SG & SH, a diode & relay are also shown. The diode is shown inserted into a white wire between the R/R & the relay. The relay has red/white to the fuse panel, blue/black to the tach & the reserve lighting module, black to ground and white from the diode.
OK how do I check that these things are working, what do they look like in real life and where are they situated on the bike?
Thanks,
Fred Hill, S'toon.

[Dragonrider]

The relay is the headlight relay...under the tank near the back of it...square thingy... it's a latching relay that is supposed to trigger via the white wire with the diode in it, and once on, stay on until you turn off the key.

I never found that darn diode on my 80 Special...it's in the harness somewhere. I ended up bypassing the relay so my headlight worked...but this relay should not affect your charging...

Good luck!

[skids]

Did you try swapping-out a rectum fryer? It sounds as if the VR is working OK, but either the rectifier (bridge diodes) if the clip connectors are foul. The current into the rectifier from any of the 3 white wires should read voltage, alternating current. I think you could slip a testing probe into the clip and test the voltage for each white wire, connect the other test lead to ground, and make sure that each one shows voltage with the bike running. If not, there is a clip behind the fuse panel. You may only have one bad connector...the one that powers the lights relay, but if you are not getting charging amps, I say that it is not the light diode's fault in this case. I wouldn't rip apart the harness just yet!

[Ken Talbot]

Where's the diode?

This afternoon, I was cannibalizing an old wiring harness for parts to fix the DT360. I unwrapped a bunch of tape, and came across this, right in the middle of the harness:


This has to be the diode, inside a bit of shrink wrap:


Came across something else I thought was interesting. A few inches away, there is a one into three crimp connector to turn a single red/white lead into three red/while leads. This was simply wrapped with a bit of tape inside the main harness tape cover.

[fredintoon]

Thanks

Hi Dan, Ken,
the advice & photos are most helpful.
I did find the most likely cause of the bike not charging. The PO had unwrapped a large portion of the under-tank harness & Mr. Stupid didn't bother to tape it up again which is why that red wire got trapped between a coil & the frame & the insulation finally extruded off it allowing an unauthorised ground connection.
See my post "more wiring woes" where T.C. & I are currently sorting between several contradictory wiring diagrams to see where some other wires really go.
Fred Hill, S'toon.

[Dragonrider]

Way cool Ken! You found the durn diode!

That crimp three-way thing ticks me off. Shouldn't do that sort of stuff inside a harness. I wonder how many of us have been fighting a connection problem with something like that and never know it...