On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Zachariah Mully wrote:
>I don't know about you, but I would consider a stator swap evidence of
>failure.
Might Electrex have had a batch of defective G35 stators lying around from
which all of our fearless adventurers got their units? It's within the
realm of possibility when you consider that this isn't a high volume part.
Was Electrex given the opportunity to examine and replace the suspect
parts? I think they had Van Twyver's stator at their facility back when I
had my setup installed and it tested good. The reason we didn't place his
old stator in my bike is because there *was* a fitment issue that involved
the mounting bolts (they weren't long enough). They ended up installing a
newer G35 that was constructed with one less plate.
>And not that I am necessarily rabble rousing here, but people *have* had
>trouble with it in the most unfortunate places.
I don't deny that.
Electrex doesn't seem to be getting any useful feedback from the KLR
community other than "your stuff sucks." They noted the installation
difficulty involving the spade connectors not being included with G35,
they noted the fact that the stock R/R mounting bolts are just barely long
enough to mount it to the fender, and they noted that the newer G35 with
one less plate needs to be supplied for our application. What they still
don't know is why the list community (myself excluded) can't seem to get
their stuff to work and keep it working.
Are the windings suffering from vibration-induced fatigue? Is the wire
insulation not holding up? Is the R/R failing? Are the wires leading out
of the engine cover getting damaged during the install or are they too
weak to begin with? These are all possibilities, but until we can put our
finger on something, the system will never improve.
Electrex is not very big company and they cannot realistically own a fleet
of bikes for testing, which is probably one of the reasons why they had me
supply my bike as a tester. The parts had already been tested on an "A"
model KLR but the guys in Oceanside wanted to see what we were bitching
about so they did it again. 28k miles later, the system is still going
strong.
>On the other hand the stock stator/rectifier system doesn't seem to have
>any issues.
Other than needing more output. A problem with which the Electrex setup
may or may not help significantly.
>Besides, has anyone measured the actual output of the system? Just
>wondering if their 280W claim is accurate. Dunno if it's worth $400 for
>suspect power output.
With a 100W high beam, a Gerbing liner, the fan running, and the normal
complement of lights, you need somewhere around 3500-4000rpm for charging
to begin. I'll have better numbers later when I hack up a cheap DMM and
stick it under my map pouch window.
Bottom line - We cannot say with confidence that the system is faulty, but
we also cannot say with confidence that it is NOT faulty.
RM