Updated Photo's of YellowJacket

[YellowJacket!]

I was just messing around with my cameraphone today and decided to take some new pictures of YJ.  Its a gorgeous sunny mid-August day here in TN and beautiful riding weather in the upper 70's - although its supposed to hit 94 today.  Can't do much riding though since I have to go back to class and will be there until 6:30.  At least I'll take YJ to school though.

Anyway, the pics show the new seat as well as the 83 rearsets and external R/R.

Overall things have been going quite well but I'm going to have to do an electrical check.  VM indicates charging around 14.8 but occasionaly goes up to the upper 15's and sometimes as low as 13.8.  Not noticed that before so I'm going to check my wiring but I have a gut feeling that some gremlins may be nibbling on my RR or stator.   :o   :'(

Anyway, heres some pics for your enjoyment.





David

[Re-Vision]

Love it! Really looks great David. Seat looks cool too.   BDC

[Raj1988]

MOSFET that S#$*

[munkyfistfight]

Gorgeous bike! I noticed you don't have the YICS hooked up. Is it running better for you that way? Also, I've been noticing my VM reading around 14.8V while running, but once the bike overheats and I'm sitting at rest, it occasionally drops under 14. This might be fixed with moving the RR from the heat zone.

[QBS]

Maybe the voltage drop is due to the fan coming on.

[YellowJacket!]

Gorgeous bike! I noticed you don't have the YICS hooked up. Is it running better for you that way? Also, I've been noticing my VM reading around 14.8V while running, but once the bike overheats and I'm sitting at rest, it occasionally drops under 14. This might be fixed with moving the RR from the heat zone.

Heh heh, I do actually have a YICS, its on the other side.  However, it is camaflauged.  I had split it in half, then ran two bolts through it and cinched it together tight enough to seal it but used rubber grommets on either side to still give it some flex.  Since the chrome cover wouldnt fit over the bolts, I painted the YICS flat black and it blends right in.  YJ runs like crap without it but purrsw like a kitten when its working good.

On a side note, I think I jinxed myself today as my voltmeter was alarming all the way to school and back with a reading of 16.5 to 16.8 - thats the highest I think its ever been.  It did drop down to 13.5 a few times, but briefly and about 1 mile from home the alarm quit beeping and it stayed in the mid 15's.  Looks like I have some troubleshooting to do.

On yet another side note, I posted a couple weeks back in the thread about reconnecting my carb vent hoses and I must say that it has made an incredible improvement in the way she runs.  Starts easy, idles rock steady, good solid rise in RPM's and smooth running all around.

David

[Tiger]

my voltmeter was alarming all the way to school and back with a reading of 16.5 to 16.8 David

Check your battery hasn't boiled dry buddy. Go for a MOSFET R/R... ;)

                8) ....... TIGER ....... 8)

[YellowJacket!]

my voltmeter was alarming all the way to school and back with a reading of 16.5 to 16.8 David

Check your battery hasn't boiled dry buddy. Go for a MOSFET R/R... ;)

                8) ....... TIGER ....... 8)

Thanks Tiger and QBS,

John, its a gel battery.  QBS, it des it with fan on or off.  I've also switched to highbeams to pull a bit more load and it only made a difference for  about 30 seconds.

David

[Cdnlouie]

Dave, get that R/R off the bike ASAP.  The voltage regulator is toast in the R/R.  It will toast your gel battery too and that would be a shame.  They have a maximum charge rate and if it's sealed it can blow up like a balloon, definitely not a good thing.  The R/R is not regulating the voltage properly, really nothing else does that, just change it out and you will be golden again.

Great to see the old girl getting such fine beauty treatments!

[YellowJacket!]

Well, I have a bit of good news.  I spent the better part of my break between my emergency med class and my radiology class researching the posts on the mosfet regulators.  Tigers post was very helpfyl especially the link to the SV forums with the awesome tutorial.  So after reading that I started searching for decent Mosfet R/R's and was about to pull the trigger on one when I though abput something I had learned in my ER class: "Don't trust the monitor!".  Even though the monitor may say something, we still have to check the patient, which is what I did todat after I got home from school.

I said to myself, Hmmmm, I wonder if its the monitor?  So, I got my good DVM out of my tool cart and hooked it up to the battery terminals and fired YJ up.  My dash mounted VM was reading 16.1 volts and the DVM was reading 14.5.  Duiring the several minute test, the voltage difference between the two was no less than 1 volt and the DVM stayed right around 14.5.  Interestingly, if I switched to highbeams, teh DVM dropped to 14.0 for about a second while the dash VM did not change.  The DVM returned back to 14.5 after a second or two.

So, I am almost certain that the Stator and R/R are fine but I'm going to save some cash to get an MOSFET R/R and install it ASAP.  In the mean time, I'm going to find a better voltmeter to mount on my dash.

The moral of the story.... Dont Trust The Monitor!   ;D

David

[Cdnlouie]

Great news! Interestingly I was doing the same thing this week. I found a shorted diode in my RR which was giving me low charging symptoms very similar to a burned stator.  Not a happy thought.  My statistics seem to be about 1 R/R for every two stators.

The good news (from my point of view) was that a diode was shorted out in the RR, so I've had a mosfet sitting around for a while, just not in a rush to put it on.  Kind of forced my hand, but it is a nice unit with more consistent and stronger charging capacity. I even relocated it back into it's original position because it does not have the heat issues common to the old one. So back in business again!

Happy motoring  ;),

[darkvision]

David, YJ   looks great! Thanks for the pix.  I'd mount a heatsink over the left case accessplate to keep your stator alive . I have over 20K miles on my current used Honda Shadow stator. 
I use your former Mossi jacket all the time , thanks again for selling it to me.  Hope all goes well with your medical schooling, I know you'll do great.
all the best , darkV

[YellowJacket!]

Heh heh.. Glad you are enjoying the mossi.  I finally settled on a Coretech breeze which works great in the hot weather here...very comfortable too and it has a great liner for colder weather.

I have the RR mounted just to the rear of the battery on a frame downtube.  Seems to be working well there.  As it turned out my voltage "problems" were due to a faulty voltmeter and I purchased the Kuryakin LED VM.  If I can get enough studying done today I'm going to mount it in the space for my indicator lights since I'm not using them.  (now wired to the digital gauge cluster)

Thanks for the kind words on school.  Things are going well and I'm about to hit the 1 year mark in a couple weeks.  We have finals coming up next week for this quarter then I have almost three weeks off before I start my last quarter of Didactic.  We have a White Coat ceremony this December and then I will be starting my clinical rotations in January.  Its amazing how you can squeeze almost 6 years of medschool into just 2 1/2 years.   :o

David