Well momma and I just got back from the Smokies! The trip started out fine with the temps nice and the colors were simply awesome. Second day into our stay, we decided to ride north a bit further and on the way back momma asks me why the red light was on on the speedo face. Oh crap! I looked at the dials and the voltmeter was bottomed out. I made it to a station and proceded to try and get help. Called H-D of Knoxville and got no answer at 1:00 in the afternoon on a Wed. The people at the station put me onto Colbach's H-D above Morristown, TN. These guys were great! They sent an enclosed trailer to pick us up, and then put a man right on it to try and fix us up.
OK, the stators toast and the mech got right to work on replacing it. We were there about 4 1/2 hrs and it cost me $430 bucks even with the towing. If your ever north of Knoxville or even close to it, forget Knoxville H-D because everyone has problems with them ( at least that's what I was told ).

 

Just wondering how many miles were on your bike? I had about 23,000 on my 2001 Ultra when the stator went out last year, the mechanic said they've had problems with them.

 

I thought your stator took a vacation.

Trouble on the road is never welcome. Sounds like it happened to turn out good for you. That's great!!

 

I assume that you meant that bottom out = 12VDC and not 0VDC. If it read 0VDC, how can it keep running with no juice from the battery?

My '04 Ultra with 30,000 dips once in a while to 12VDC then swings back to 14 VDC. Once it hit steady at 12VDC and turned on the Check engine and battery dash lamps. I keeped riding the pig and eventually the charging voltage increased and the dash lamps turned off. I checked the DTC's and it read P0562 (Battery Voltage Low). When I got home, I did voltage drop checks to see if I had bad battery cables. I couldn't find one so I replaced the battery since it was already 2 years old. The voltage still dips once in a while. Unfortuantly, I can't get it to fail when I'm testing the charging system in my garage. I checked the stator voltage out with and O'scope and DVM and compared it to my '05 road Glide. Both were the same. At 2000 RPM the voltage output was 170V p-p with the o'scope and 28VDC with the DVM. At 3000 RPM the voltage output was 200V p-p with the o'scope and 70VDC with the DVM. I checked the charging ripple and both were the same, 0.5V p-p. The charging voltage was also very close, 14.4VDC@2000 RPM. I've got pic's that I would like to post but not on this thread.

 

I would think that the voltage regulator would be the most likely suspect. I had a car back in the 70's that did the same thing. I would have expected a bad diode in the rectifier but you checked the ripple voltage and it is smooth. Intermittant electrical problems suck.

 

Riedel, I have almost 25000 miles on her and it was 24207 when the stator went out.

Gsparesa, the volt meter was almost to the bottom of the scale ( 8 volts ) when I looked at it. The bike was still running, but when I hit the brakes the odometer went blank and the lights dimmed some. I figure it didn't have much left in the battery to keep it going for much longer.

The dealership said they hoped it would be the regulator, but that it would probably be the stator. They also mentioned that it was fairly common for bikes in my year to fry a stator in the first few years. Hopefully it was a problem with those particular stators and won't be a recurring problem.

 

A depressing situation to be sure, more depressing than stale head-less beer but not as depressing as that woody you found on your new girl friend.

In that sistuation you expireinced, I would of instantly assumed a shorted stator. If I ever encounter a problem like this one that you experienced, I would have quickly disconnected the stator to voltage regulator connector. The connector that sits just in front of the voltage regulator. If it was a shorted stator, you would get more miles out of the stored battery charge. If it was a shorted regulator, well nothing would have changed.

 

My stator went out at 32k miles. It was intermittant for a while and that gave me a problem too. I'd start the engine and the charging voltage was fine. After a ride it wasn't working at all. So, I connected a digital voltmeter (set to a.c. volts) to the stator wires by piercing the wire jackets with straight pins and started the engine. I set a high idle and walked away. In about 5 - 10 minutes I heard the engine speed up considerably. The stator opened up; no a.c. output. My old stator wires were toast were they connect to the heavy wires that exit the primary. Apparently, it would make good connection until it got hot. I suspect this is the main way the stator fails. I read with interest how you checked your stator output with a scope. The p-p output is interesting. But, how did you measure a d.c. output on the stator since the rectification occurs in the voltage regulator? Do you agree that the voltage regulator doesn't control the output of the stator and that only engine speed controls that? Some believe the voltage regulator can "overwork" the stator. That might happen on a car or some other brand of bike that has an automotive style charging system but Harley's idea of a charging system is so "lawnmower-ish" that I don't think so.

 

Sorry, the output of the stator is AC and I should have wrote VAC and not VDC. The output of the voltage regulator is howerver DC but there is ripple ridding on the output DC voltage of the regulator. The AC output resembles a clipped AC waveform or square wave. The voltage regulators job is to create regulated DC from the output of the stator which is AC. Engine RPM effects the voltage and frequency of the stator's AC output. The only way the voltage regulator could effect that output of the Stator is if it was shorted which would load the stator.

 

I uploaded the waveforms in electrical section of this forum

Stator Output Voltage Waveform

Voltage Regulator Output Ripple Waveform