spanner one, thank you for your response. I would agree with your advice opening up that part of the bike should only happen if you really need to... I did before I read your post... realised I was able to test everything fine without doing that and my tests were coming back good. That being said, my clymers manual says to open that puppy up to do any tests on it... bad advice... shame clymers.
SO, your post is a little confusing. You see my reg/rec up above, (i posted photo) there is only one green wire, and that fits into the stock wire block which before went to the stock rectifier... That is where the green ground field coil wire connects in the stock set up... ... or is this where i'm getting confused...
the green wire that would normally connect to the stock regulator (Which i thought went to ground, but is that the green that is supposed to connect to the field / green from the alternator/generator? In my new reg/rec there is no connector for that green ground which was before on the stock regulator. The best I can find online is that the unit grounds through the body of the reg/rec. So I have taken that green wire from the old regulator, put a different connector on it so that it fits nicely onto a mounting bold for the reg/rec and i'm using that as the ground at this point for the reg/rec. (though, again, I can't get it to work properly when set up this way).... YOU say that field coil wire should not go into the block connector but that it should go straight to ground, and then i presume you suggest the green wire from the reg/rec should also go straight to ground? Have you used this reg/rec before? and that set up worked?
After reading my response is it more clear what i'm doing wrong/right?
others suggested it was a ground issue early in this thread.... All my grounds have very low resistance... .002 or .0018.