Thoughts on Rons' oil sight glass observation

[JaBey]

Even if the cost is 2-3 times the price of the old one, if it's perminent it would be worth it I would think. I'll keep my fingers crossed, but new tech always seems to have that damned phrase attached to it...'Cost Prohibitive'. However, NASA these days knows a thing or two about cost prohibitive, so there certainly is hope.
Isn't technology funny? Every technique that is either too new, or too old, is always too expensive:) I sometimes wonder if we will ever run out of the "materials of tomorrow" to replace the "labor costs of yesterday".

[Walt_M.]

I read the ceramawire site pretty closely and noticed the largest wire they make is 18 ga and I think that is what our stators are wound with. Also, I did not take the time to figure the wire resistance. It was given in ohms/circular mil/foot. Maybe one of the engineers can do something with that. Sounds good so far but I do wonder about price.

[supervision]

I just took some time reading about series regulators instead of shunt regulators  this harley after market site, Compufire? spelling off, makes a statement that rather than shunting full output to ground like ours try to regulate the series regulator can somehow disconect output and let the stator be on stand by , to regulate.   thus lowering heat and not waisting horsepower!!!!  

[supervision]

I checked the spelling it's Compu-Fire voltage regulaters .

[QBS]

I just read Rons' Honda CX500tc post.  Required reading for all who investigate and pontificate our problem.  Walt, what are your thoughts on Georges' conclusions?

[ArrrGeee]

well, I'm sure we don't need wire rated for 1000 degrees but it is an idea.

super:

I checked out the compufire stuff and yeah it looks good. I don't know how it would work out in the real world but I do like the custom mounting bracket heh heh...
I'm no electrical engineer so if it does what they say it does
it makes sense based on removing the load from the stator instead of shorting it to ground.  if the solution to increasing
stator life is this simple, I'm wondering why the engineers who designed it didn't build it that way.
maybe its a just a cost thing, the 22 amp unit from compufire is about 85 bucks, I'll bet the real cost of the yamaha one was about 4 bucks in 1982 dollars....
Electrex wants 135 bucks for theirs, again, I wonder what the difference is...


-Ron

[JaBey]

The overflow drains are made of pressed plastic Ron...need I say more?:P hehe

[Lucky]

the drains do have a brass core, but your right, still inexpensive.  there is a simple reason vehicle manufacturers to this stuff:
If a part, call it a Widget, costs $12 to make, and they can save $1 by making part of it out of plastic, then if they sell a million Widgets, they just saved one millon dollars...

--Lucky

[Rupert]

Just a quick mention on the ceramic coated wire:

The ceramic is porous and thus will absorb water from the oil during short runs on the bike before the oil gets up to temp, so it may still need a thin dip of epoxy before installation.

[ArrrGeee]

Triumph seemed to think a permanant magnet setup is ok
as long as it's oil cooled. I'd almost take that as them saying the oil is cooler than the stator?
it's not clear what or how they are achieving this. The picture doesn't give you much information.
this is an ad for the 2001 TT600
http://www.hermys.com/triumph/tt600/2001/

Whats even more interesting is that if you go here:
http://www.tt600.org/
and do a search on stator, you get a bunch of hits....
http://www.tt600.org/portal/DUforum/searchResult.asp?key=stator
Not all are about a dead stator (the bikes are only 2-3 years old)
but add to that this info about a charging system recall:
<QUOTE>
Triumph Service Bulletin 302.

This is the one that has been referred to as the "alternator wiring recall":

Service Bulletin 302

January 2002
Affected Models: TT600
VIN: 98680 to 155233 (I believe there should be a "0" in front of the "9")
Markets: All
Subject: Main Wiring Harness

Background Information:
Triumph have received information that, in circumstances where there is high alternator loading, thicker diameter alternator to regulator/rectifier cables may be beneficial. We are therefore instructing all dealers to make simple modifications to the wiring harness on the above model, within the affected VIN range (provided above)

Customer Contact Instructions:
For vehicles in service, the work must be completed when the vehicle is next returned to the dealership for service or repair.

Parts required: Sub harness T2500223 (1 required)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not 100% but I'm pretty sure this Service Bulletin will be carried out free of charge even if you bike is out of warranty. But be sure you check and ask the RIGHT people before bringing your bike in. This is not an "official safety recall" so there is no need to rush down and have it done immediately but next time it is due for service have them do it.

</QUOTE>


-Ron

[ofstone]

It is maybee possible to use polyimide copper wire.
My compagny uses it for winding coils in space applications, and it can handel temps of 260 degrees celcius and above (depending on wichy type) without problems, it is also chemical resistant and verry resistant to mechanical stresses.
I think it will be a lot cheaper and more easy to buy than the ceramics wire, because the polyimide wire we use is available by companies in europe and also USA.

As i read the specs off the ceramics wire, you also have to remind the maximum bend radius of the wire because otherwise cracks will occure causing again chorts, they say minimum bend radius is 7 X wire diameter, that means if you use a wire of 1.5 mm than the maximum bend radius is 1.5 X 7 = 10.5 mm and the radius of the stator poles are smaller than 10.5 mm i think.

Also the ceramics wire has a higher resistance (nickel has a higher resistance than copper) so it will generate even more heat and eventually burn oil. (not flames but making the oil verry rapidly black and contaminated with carbon pieces wich will eventually clog the oilfilter.

I dont want to be nagative about someone elses good ideas, but maybee it is better to use the polyimide copper wire.
If someone is interested i can take a look to the manufacturers list, when i am at work and also can find a website or price, or maybee you can search for it on google.

[Walt_M.]

I just read Rons' Honda CX500tc post. ?Required reading for all who investigate and pontificate our problem. ?Walt, what are your thoughts on Georges' conclusions?

.
I don't completely agree, the post was so long and covered so many possibilities that it was hard to draw a conclusion. Our system and, I suspect his as well, will start putting out enough current to run the electrical load and start charging the battery at around 2500 rpm. His theory of 150 amps output from the stator does not take into account the internal resistance of the stator, current will never get that high. Additional load to the system, within the system capacity should not hurt the stator and may in fact help the R/R as there would be less current shunted to ground.
 It was interesting reading though, I guess misery does indeed love company!

[RussD]

Going back to Lucky's reminder of moving the r/r to a cooler place........I was thinking about this the other day, as my bike seems to be charging in the low 12's now that I've got her running again. Remember back in the fall when I found my stator wires manifold to my manifold, yet I had just had the longest ride of my life on the bike (Go back and read the beginning of my "Long, Strange Trip post)? ?I had posed the question to all of you about if the wires being grounded to the manifold was somehow completing the circuit and suddenly allowing my bike to recharge correctly. Now I'm wondering if the manifold somehow acted like a great big r/r and disappated more heat from the stator allowing it to charge at a higher level, as I'm obviously on the low end of the spectrum again now that I've fixed that little mess, though when I took the trickle charger off the other day & put the DMM on the batter, it was reading over 15?? Could the problem be that rather than moving the existing r/r to a cooler place, we just need a BIGGER r/r to handle the extra heat that our fixed magnet design generates? I know this idea is nowhere near as technical as some of you guys, but hopefully I'm making enough sense you get what I'm trying to say here in a rudimentary, Vision for Dummies way ? ;)

Oh yeah..........and Ron, in answer to your question about what the stator looked like upon failure........My parts were the ones sent to Ritzo. I don't have anyone elses to compare to, so asking him what he thought when he saw them may be a better judge, but to me it seemed the insulation was a bit crispy in places

[ArrrGeee]

good point ofstone;
the ceramic wire is the situation taken to the extreme.
yes the polymide looks like a possibility, I did read the specs on the ceramic wire and it's likely that it will be really expensive, may not be worth the cost. I did get a quote from a company called wiretronic. 200c polymide is about 135 for 1000 ft. as the minimum quantity, 19ga.  one problem with that of course is what do you do with 1000 ft. of magnet wire... the other being that with the stator getting crispy, 200c may or may not be enough.

on the other stuff, I think someone with a little more eletrical background than myself should be able to say what the maximum amperage that will flow through the wire before it melts should be.  I think thats an important factor in this equation.   Just running a higher temp resistant wire can only be part of the solution. we haven't any specs from yamaha or electrex on what they're using but if I was a company like electrex, I'd be using the highest rating that I could reasonably charge for, which means they probably do use 200c class wire

The statement from electrex is that they are coming out with a heavier duty regulator. if it's like the compufire one that disconnects the stator instead of shorting to ground, I'm all for it.

This goes back to the testing that I mentioned a while ago on what happens to the stator if it is completely open with no load on it. does it still get hot ?

The whole idea of shorting the stator to ground just doesn't sit well with me,  it's like sticking the knife into the toaster to get that stuck slice of bread out. yeah it'll work but you'll probably have really curly hair when you're done. ;D

one problem I do see with the open stator style regulator is
the load on the switching mechanism. switching that amount of current off and on would require a heck of a relay I would think...  any thoughts on that ?

-Ron

[supervision]

  I talked to a person at comp-ufire about a regulator for our 3phase stator systems, all he would say was it wouldn't work..  I think that means he only has it figured out for harleys at this time...  If a series regulator truely does what he claims on cooler and less horsepower draw , IT would be worth the trouble...  here's   something to read..  www.infodotinc.com/neets/book7/27k.htm   This is a page like an electronics course on voltage regulators the further you read the better it gets.. hit next after each page.

[Ken_Williams]

The Compu-fire Harley regulator is of the series type.  The Vision is of the shunt type.  If we could use the Compu-fire regulator on the Vision, less current would flow in the stator and and less heat would be generated in the stator and the regulator.  Does anyone know details of the Harley alternator?  

On the Compu-fire website they say ??shunt style regulator which fully loads stator by grounding the output at full charge.?  This is not really true.  The point they are trying to make is that at full charge, maximum power is dissipated in the stator and regulator with shunt regulation.  Under these conditions almost no power is dissipated in the stator and regulator with series regulation.

Either type of regulator controls the system voltage with power semiconductors.  No relay switching is necessary.  

[ofstone]

I don't think wiring the stator with other wire will elliminate failing stators, it will only reduce the time between failures. This is because when the stator is shorted due an broken R/R due overheating then you still have a lot off current and power in the stator wich burns the stator, or melts your solderings from the stator wires (solid single stranded) to the normal wires splice (flexible multi-stranded).
I am sure if we use series regulator instead of shunt regulator or a combination of both, solder the critical connections and use a good battery then we are rid off almost all problems with the stator.
Just reduce the heat in the stator.

I think the reason why the guys from compu-fire says it is a problem, because a harley works with a single phase alternator and whe have a 3 phase alternator wich works a little bit more difficult. If the stator is open, with no load there is no current so also no power lost in the generator, and also no power used from the engine.

I only think that it is not as simple as they are saying, just disconecting the generator from the battery. This means that your bike is running for instance 1 minute on battery power, and the next minute charging battery and using power. Then there would be a lot of power used and if you are running on high revs then the voltage would increase above the maximum voltage dameging components like the TCI.
Also the open voltage of the alternator is verry high. It is about 80 volts I have read somewere at high revs. This will not harm the stator But you would need to use high voltage components to swith on and off the power.

If this is the solution it would be verry simple to make someting that disconnects the stator from the R/R. If the voltage rises above the voltage the R/R starts shunting power, and connects it back when the voltage drops below this point. This would average the stators dissapated power, and almost no power is whasted in shunting to ground so the stator would be cooler(also the R/R).
Then the only problem would be the temp of the stator would go up and down (power on and off and also TCI), causing mechanically stress to the wire and the insulation causing cracks and shorts. A solution to this would be switching the stator on and off in a short time so the stators temperature does not rise and fall a lot (like on 10 secs and off 10 secs). This would be verry easy to do with a microcontroller, some capacitors, resistors and some triacs(low voltage drop type).
The only thing you would notice then is that the lights off the bike will burn brighter when battery is charging and weaker when running on battery. But who care,s about that if the stator lives longer!
Also then we could still use the original stator and R/R.

The best would be to rectify the output and then use a DC/DC converter, but to find a convertor with a wide range input(12 to 80 volts) and 22 amps of output power. is not easy to find/build and also not verry cheap to make i think.

So the more i am thinking off the switch disconnecting the stator from the R/R, the more i like the idea.

[supervision]

  ofstone, nice thinking, yea this is what I have been trying to picture mentally... It's  like if we had this voltage sencer that would switch off at 14.5v and turn back on at say 13.8v, it would make a smoother looking dc voltage..   It might be cycling very fast and might not be detectable.  Ofstone you sound electronic is that ture??   Are you positive which is negative??   have you done anything with high tech switching  like classes or anything?   supervision...  Bye the way all wires are filled with smoke if you let out the smoke nothing works..

[kiawrench]

rather than keep guessing, or praying for help or whatever we are doing here,, we have a total of 5 companies working on this now, two that build system power generation items only, a company that does nothing but build regulation gear ,and two different sets of r/d enginners.
   i say we sit back, give them a week or two, then start asking for our answer from them. we know the wire is too small to handle the output we are told to expect, we know it gets hot and we know it shorts- other than that , we know we need help.     next we are going to need bank loans to buy the new parts,, lol

[ArrrGeee]

yep, get ready to remortgage the house.
ceramiwire goes for about 600 for 250 ft. can you say ouch!
one other interesting thing when I had the conversation with the sales rep was when I mentioned 20 amps he suggested that 12 guage wire was more in line with that kind of amperage...  huh?!?!

so is it that the stator is just rated for 20 amps but could never output that much?  or is it a huge design flaw because there is not that much room to wind it with heavy duty wire...
it's very bizarre.  if the 18-19 guage wire that it is wrapped with got anywhere near that kind of amperage, it would start melting and cook the insulation then short to the closest thing it could find.
the chart in my service manual states the rating is 20a\14v at 3000 rpm.

there has to be some part of the equation thats missing here.

-Ron