Help-Last minute R/R questions.

[dneuman]

Hell All,
 
  Well the my vision based art bike is going to be loaded into the truck tonight and I will have only like an hour to futz with the R/R beforehand.  From reading here I think that to maximize my chances of not screwing the pooch with this R/R I need to?????
     1. Cut off the connectors and solder the three stator leads to the R/R?
     2. Run a ground wire from the ground wire (the big black one right?) on the R/R chassis side harness.
     3. Does the case of the R/R need to be grounded?  Right now mine is not, its zip tied to some plastic hangin out in the breeze.

   Any quick help would be greatly appreciated. Please someone tell me if what I suggest above is a really bad idea.
  I'm freaking out because of the time constraints I'm working under right now.

     Thanks,
        Daniel Neuman
        Oakland CA


   

[dneuman]

Its a ricks regulator if that matters.  Does it matter?  I tested the voltage at the batt and it started at ~13.5V and then crept up to ~14.5V.
Here's another question...How can I be sure that the batt is still good?  Whats a laymens test for the batt?
  My batt is remotely mounted and its bigger than stock.  Its a lawn and garden battery from Kragen if that matters.

help....

[h2olawyer]

     1. Cut off the connectors and solder the three stator leads to the R/R?
     2. Run a ground wire from the ground wire (the big black one right?) on the R/R chassis side harness.
     3. Does the case of the R/R need to be grounded?  Right now mine is not, its zip tied to some plastic hangin out in the breeze.

#1 - correct, cut out connectors & solder the stator leads to the R/R.
#2 - I haven't done this mod, but others swear it helps.  Can run the wire to the neg. battery terminal instead.
#3 - The original mounting for the R/R is on plastic so you don't need to ground the case

As for battery test, check the voltage across the terminals while starting.  It shouldn't drop much below 10V (as far as I can remember).  Then it should recover & charge around 14.5V.  If there is some lag between starting & reaching the 14.5 volts, it shouldn't be any real problem.  May have something to do with the larger battery.

Hope this helps - have a great time!

H₂O

[dneuman]

Well to answer my own question the local Kragen has a computerized battery tester that tested my batt as bad....I don't know if the kid was using it right but I figured I would get another batt just to be safe.  I got the 'nascar' batt with 400 cold cranking amps for a whopping $36 bucks.

H2O thats a good point about the bigger batt taking longer to charge up initally and show the higer reading-makes sense to me at least.

[h2olawyer]

I may be the last person here you want figuring out anything electrical but I thought about the greater volume of the larger battery & figured that may play a role in a bit of lag between discharge & full charging power.  Not sure If it's right but it sounded plausible to me.  I'm sure I will be "corrected" if I'm off base.

Glad you have a spare battery just in case.

H₂O