Topic: Cb550K my charging issue

[eric11]

I have read all over these forums. Through all of the charging problem areas and have done endless tests. So that's why I've started this. Any help would greatly appreciated. Greatly!


Some background on the bike

It is a 1978 cb550k with just over 14,000 on it
Dyna s ignition
Battery tender lithium battery btl14a240c it's a 12v 10-14ah 240cca 51.2 watt hours
I have take off the starter and the starter solenoid. So it's only kick now.
New Ricks rectifier regulator combo unit
I also have a voltmeter connected to the battery terminals

When the bike is off and the battery has been sitting over night I read 12.8v at the terminals. 

Turn the key with out the headlight on it drops to 12.6v

Kick start it and it holds at 12.6 of course until it has been running for awhile as it slowly begins to drop.

Get on bike and rev motor to 2000 rpm 12.9 v
3000rpm 13.1
4000rpm 13.3
5000rpm 13.3
6000rpm 13.3

I have tested the alternator at the yellow wires in the harness to the rectifier. They are all correct and none off them have continuity when I touch the other tester wire to a ground.

The rectifier and regulator are new but I tested them anyways and it all checked out.

I just recently had my frame powder coated but I made sure to chop all of that off at the motor mount and behind the coils for the green ground.

I just did a rebuild on the whole bike. I have reused the old wiring harness but I have cleaned the connectors.....

What am I missing!?!? Does anyone know why I can't break 13.3 volts when its revved???

What else can I do?


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[turboed13b]

Your battery is almost dead at 12.8. A liFe battery should be around 13.3v resting.

[calj737]

Not so fast...

The battery will only get what the Regulator permits (barring any other issues). The Ricks shipped with a loose BLACK wire. Where did you. Connect it? This is the 12v sensing wire. If this wire sees a different voltage than your voltmeter, you will see a discrepancy in the charge state of your battery. This wire will also limit the amount of voltage sent to the battery, if it is getting an incorrect reading.

If you are relying purely on the raring from the voltmeter, this is potentially a problem. Confirm the resting (2 hours after a full charge from an auxiliary source, not a "trickle charger") with a meter at the battery. Then compare that reading with the voltmeter connected. Also, RED probe from meter on POS, BLACK on chassis. Do you get the same reading as you had at the battery?

It is very possible that your battery is damaged and no longer accepting a full charge. LiFe batteries are not terribly resilient to "over-discharge". So if you dragged it down too low, it may indeed need replacement. But, are you experiencing any problems with your bike other than not seeing a higher charge?

And lastly, just because your voltmeter doesn't see 14.v put to the battery, doesn't mean much. If the Regulator is saying "I only need 13.3v to be happy" then that's all you're going to see. If you want a true value for the output of your stator, there's a separate test for that. But you're conflating a few issues and drawing a conclusion that may, or may not be the correct one.

Make sense?

[Farley121]

  The Dyna ignition will eat up some of the already low outout as well.

[eric11]

Thanks you all so much for your replies. Calj737. I'm doing all the tests you recommend. Off the ricks unit they have a wire harness that is a match to the stock harness. And it has a separate black, white, and green. I assumed these were from the regulator. So I hooked them up to the corresponding colors from the stock regulator. Black to black  green to green white to white. Was i wrong in doing this?

I charged the battery overnight last night with my battery tender junior charger. It did a full charge and gave me a solid green light meaning it was successfully charged. At the battery no I have 13.6 volts with my meter on my bike and 13.7 with my digital multimeter. Is this correct?... The battery has been resting all day before I tested it.

Then I did red from meter on positive on battery and the black of meter grounded to frame and the same reading 13.7.

I am not experiencing other problems with my bike besides it not wanting to charge the battery at full 14.5v
 
Where do I go now?


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[calj737]

Your battery is fully charged. The Regulator won't allow 14.5v to it because the battery is "reporting" full. If you want to determine the output range of your stator, there's a separate test for that where the battery and Regulator is not involved. I'd encourage you to review this and determine if you actually have a problem.

http://www.electrosport.com/media/pdf/fault-finding-diagram.pdf

Just because your voltmeter was reading low, doesn't mean the battery is bad. It only means the battery is low, and charging back to full state from the bike only is a challenge to do. You'd need to be riding in a steady high rpm condition for at least an hour on these older bikes.

Give the above a look and see if you have. Any further issues.

[eric11]

Thanks so much for that info calj!  I started following the diagram and when I started my bike with a fully charged battery now... It actually. Climbed. Climbed and climbed. So high I killed the bike when it hit 16 volts!? So according to that diagram I started following the black wire coming from the rectifier. With the red from the volt meter on the black wire and the black from the volt meter on the battery negative I had nothing. So I traced it up to the headlight. Where the ignition key switch is wired I there is a black wire that was not being plugged in. From the previous owner he said he had charging issues. When I hooked everything back up I hooked up the new key ignition just like he had it wired. Not thinking about it. Now that I look at it it is only utilizing 3 of the the 5 wires coming from the harness. Now I'm trying to find a diagram for this ignition online. But I did a quick hookup of one of the wires and bravo I voltage back to my regulator. But when I started the bike it just kept climbing again

My next step is to try and find a diagram for this ignition and see how to hook it up...


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[eric11]

Doing some research with my volt meter on the diode setting I was able to put together that the key ignition that was on the bike won't work. It's a ignition from a Suzuki from what I can put together. It has Gray, Orange, red, and pink wires. Anyways..

After doing testing on it i have found out that it is not capable of running the wire positions that the manual suggests.

Now I need to order the correct ignition switch for it.

My question is if the ignition switch was just adding on connections to the wire configuration and not keeping them separate as in  (how the black and red connect together and the brown and brown and white connect together) would that cause confusion for the regulator? It's too late now to go start up my bike. But I'll get at it in the a.m.






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[calj737]

I don't think your igntion switch has anything at all to do with your charging anomalies. It's good that you're sorting it out, but, the BLK wire from the Regulator is only a sensing wire, meaning it's reading, not carrying current. The BLK wires from the stock key switch, in the headlight, in the harness do all carry 12v when switched at the key.

So the troubleshooting diagram I linked is harder to test with a Ricks if you are trying to test the Rectifier or the Regulator, as they're combined units now. But I would focus on the output of the stator, and track where the Ricks Loose BLK wire plugged into the harness. From that connection to the harness, track the other side and verify it has a solid connection to the battery POS side.

If during your tests, you had the Ricks BLK wire disconnected, and you were seeing 15-16v from the stator, that's fine. The stator will go that high without the Regulator in place to limit it.

So as I said in my first post: you're conflating issues with your charging and your key switch now. Stick solely to the charging components- battery, alternator/stator, Rectifier/Regulator. Confirm these components work, then move along to wire connections afterwards.

[eric11]

So I have been working on it for 3 hours now still attempting to figure out my charging issue.

I have been following the electrosport guide all morning. Where I am at now is I start the bike and it holds at 13.3 volts. I start to rev. Once I hit around 2800-3000 rpm the volts to the battery climbs to 15.7 and hangs. No matter how high I rev from there.

So I followed the guide and it says to test the black wire coming from the rr. So I tested that to the negative on the battery and it was a full volt lower??... So with my voltmeter connected to the black from the RR and the battery negative I revved through the Rpms
Idle 13.3
1000rpm 13.4
2000rpm 13.6
3000rpm 13.9
4000rpm 14.5
5000rpm 14.7
Just like it's supposed to. Now I'm confused. In the electrosport that says that if this is happening it is a connection between the battery and rr through the ignition. Where do I look to find this? I tried hardwiring the RR Straight to the battery without going through any connectors and it did nothing. Thanks again everyone!


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[calj737]

I think what's happening is that your key switch is introducing a voltage drop significant enough that the stock harness you plugged the Ricks Reg/Reg into is not getting an accurate reading of the battery's actual status.

To verify this, take the loose BLK wire from the Reg/Rec and connect it to the battery POS directly. This should insure that the voltmeter and the Regulator see the same voltage at the battery, and synchronize their charging/reading of the battery.

[eric11]

Well that did the trick. It climbed to 14.6 volts and held steady. So what should I do now? Should I hard wire it to the battery like that or figure out where it's going wrong in the harness?

Also the only other thing that is different which I don't know is good or bad is that it reaches 14.6 by 3000 rpm. And it should take to 5000 correct? I did run all of these tests with the front light unplugged. Would that make a difference?


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[calj737]

How you wire it depends upon how much work you want to put in. You now know your harness has issues. Want to solve it, or wait until it becomes a different problem on a different day? Me, I'd wait until after riding season, and take it all the way down and clean, repair, and re-wrap it for good.

LiFe batteries behave differently, so you should see max output earlier, and without the drain caused by the headlight, you will see less charge required. The critical measure,nets are when and limit of the charging output. I want it to be a surplus charge by 2,500 and max output before 5,000. The measurements you compared are stock with stock with lead acid batteries.

Glad it's working, now go ride that SOB! And keep an eye on keeping your battery charged