Charging System Wiring Improvement

[lutorm]

The FH008 is mounted. I cut the old yellow wires from the stator, pulled 12ga (that's ~3mm^2 in civilized units) wires to the regulator, and replaced the connectors with Metri-pack MP280 connectors. This shit is really heavy duty and totally sealed. I haven't done the battery connections yet, but I ghetto connected it just to make sure everything worked.

It seems fine, I'm now getting 14.5V at idle, going up to 14.7V with some revs. And that's with a 25ft wire coil between the R/R and the battery...

In the few minutes I ran it, there was no noticeable increase in temperature on the regulator. The remaining stator wires up to the new connector, though, got hot! Those are only about 16ga (~1.3mm^2) which is way too thin. I'm not sure how much the alternator can supply but it's gotta be at least 20A so each stator coil would then have a current of in the ballpark of 13A. The table I'm looking at says that 18A through 16ga wire will bring the temp to 90C... Would it really have killed Honda to have upped the thickness of those wires a bit?

I assume this isn't unique to my bike. Does everyone else's alternator wires get hot, too?

Edit: Pictures!

[Morespeedvicar]

In one way it would of good to see thicker wires, but a few pence per bike soon adds up when your making thousands of bikes and they have lasted twenty ish years, so i dont think they did too bad a job really. I have been thinking of doing this with mine but if its not broke it seems a shame to fix it!!!
Good job tho.
Cheers
Ian

[magg]

More battery info that has recently come to my attention and may be useful to forum members; AGM batteries, the type fitted to most motorcycles including the NC30, do not like deep discharge which is what happens when cranking an engine until the battery gives up. The older floaded acid type appears to be more forgiving but are still unhappy when deeply discharged.

In fact Yuasa claims that a AGM battery with a terminal voltage of 11.5 volts or less may need to be recharged at up to 20 volts in order to initiate current flow. Apparently the internal resistance of an AGM battery at 11.5 volts or less can be so high that it will draw insufficent current to recharge fully.

Should this be the case, some battery chargers may falsely indicate that a battery is fully charged (based on the apparent current flow and terminal voltage) when it is not and further attempts to start an engine with such a partially charged battery will make the situation worse.

If your bike is reluctant to start then either fix the starting problem, bump start it or jump start with a larger battery (also do not over-work the starter motor) but try not to over-discharge the battery.

[scotjell]

Just a quick one. What did you do with the two extra wires on the cbr fh008 reg?

[Neosophist]

More battery info that has recently come to my attention and may be useful to forum members; AGM batteries, the type fitted to most motorcycles including the NC30, do not like deep discharge which is what happens when cranking an engine until the battery gives up. The older floaded acid type appears to be more forgiving but are still unhappy when deeply discharged.

In fact Yuasa claims that a AGM battery with a terminal voltage of 11.5 volts or less may need to be recharged at up to 20 volts in order to initiate current flow. Apparently the internal resistance of an AGM battery at 11.5 volts or less can be so high that it will draw insufficent current to recharge fully.

Should this be the case, some battery chargers may falsely indicate that a battery is fully charged (based on the apparent current flow and terminal voltage) when it is not and further attempts to start an engine with such a partially charged battery will make the situation worse.

If your bike is reluctant to start then either fix the starting problem, bump start it or jump start with a larger battery (also do not over-work the starter motor) but try not to over-discharge the battery.

Erm, this is what i've said for years, it's in the books if you read them.

The bikes battery doesn't like being discharged, bike batteries dont last as long as a typical wet car battery anyway but you should always keep them fully charged up (this also lessons the risk of flattening one while starting as a weak battery will struggle to start an engine and end up discharged)

The bikes charging system isnt designed to recharge a dead battery, only maintain a charged one.

They are easy to break and overwhelm the original reg/rec.

I still believe there is nothing wrong with the original design of the reg/rec system, its a little small and compact so cannot tolerate a lot of fault but if the battery is not internally broken and discharged it seems to work ok.

I think I have the press release somewhere for the recall Honda did on the reg/rec issue with the NC30, I believe they said it was due to foam going brittle and blocking the airflow? (it was in 2001) and my memory is rubbish latley so maybe im wrong.

[lutorm]

Just a quick one. What did you do with the two extra wires on the cbr fh008 reg?

I just closed them off with heat shrink tube.