'statoritis'

[Lucky]

working on the bike yesterday i found the fuel guage connector has statoritis...the connector was melted.

never figured this from a low voltage part, & it's pulled apart every time the tank comes off...  cleaned it up & it's working fine, just thought it was weird & worth a mention.

--Lucky

[louthepou]

Which begs to ask: what, in these connectors, can age in some 25 years, and that would seriously alter their ability to conduct an electrical current?

Puzzled I am,

Lou (the electrically challenged)

[Lucky]

Corrosion & resistance.  Either the connectors weren't as clean as i thought, or my ground was bad. (my fuel guage has it's own ground, the rest of the harness is '82)

[Brian Moffet]

Lucky, the stator is a special beast, because it is putting out a lot of current.  Any resistance at the connector will cause a temperature increase.  Corrosion on the connector will provide that resistance and thus the heat.

The fuel sender is slightly different (as are most things past the battery.)  The guage is measuring a resistance (the fuel-level sender) and would normally be passing a very small amount of current.  Certainly not enough to melt the connector.  And, the guage itself has a resistance in it to drop the current even more.  That way you have a very small current going through the fuel sender to ground (and you don't heat it up and ignite the fuel).

I would check and see if that connector got near something to cause the problem.  If you passed enough current through it to melt it, you could have been passing a lot of current through the fuel sender.

Brian

[Lucky]

there was absolutly nothing near it... not even heat (it's right by the coolant bottle, but still not hot.  the connector was melted from the inside (had to pick it out of the terminals). that's why it was weird, the guagewas (?) reading properly...

[Brian Moffet]

You do have it wired correctly (which I realize is sort of a silly thing to say)?  Basically positive goes through the guage, then to the sender, then to ground.  That keeps the part that is in the fuel tank very near ground to prevent shorts being problems.

That is odd.

Brian

[supervision]

 maybe the wire got loose in the crimp

[Coil Coyle]

Lucky,
           All meters are torque motors that work against a spring. More current equals more rotation. 50 mA is a typical full scale current.

           If you found damage that was due to high current the event had to be a single occurance such as the sending unit shorting across it's variable resistor (both connectors over current and burnt) or another positive conductor shorting to the tank wall (only the ground wire connector is burnt)

Example: A horn relay switched wire rubs against the tank corner as the horn is honked. The ground wire for the sending unit is the only path back to the battery negative so it is the only connector damaged.  The 50 mA sending unit current still would get through the toasted connection with only an ohm or so of additional drop.

          ??? Have you popped any fuses mysteriously since the last time you looked at the sending unit connector?

$00.02
;)
coil