Introduction and Stator removal question

[Haystack]

Hi,

I have recently purchased a Girly; it's a year 2005 but seems to be the 2006 specification. I am located in the Bedford area in the UK and regularly use the Girly to commute from Bedford to Cambridge for work, a round trip of 65 miles each day.

For the last few months life has been fine, the Girly has performed as expected in fact was a very trusted steed indeed. Life now has taken a dive! I have fallen foul to the charging problems reported on this site.

So I have implemented the Sasquatch bypass wiring fix, worth doing I think even if you don't have any charging problems. I have carried out various tests and it appears that the Stator has failed and needs to be replaced.

I have not done this before and have hit what I hope is a minor problem and a little embarrassing as it really shows my lack of mechanical knowledge. I have removed the Stator cover bolts and removed the breather pipe but how do you get the cover off?   I am assuming that the internal magnet holds the cover in place so there must be trick to removing the cover.

Any help would be appreciated and apologies for my lack of mechanical knowledge.

[iansoady]

The manual just says: "withdraw the cover from the crankcase against the pull of the alternator magnet".

So after double checking you've got all the bolts out that seems to be it, although I haven't needed to do this myself.

[Haystack]

Thanks Iansoady.

I have now removed the Stator cover, some brief notes on it as it might be of help to others in the future.

Remove the thirteen bolts.

You will find the cover remains firmly in place even with the bolts removed. You will need to crack the two sections apart first. I used a tire lever position at the very front of the casing where the breather pipe enters. There is a small metal lug on the casing to leverage against the engine block. You don't need too much pressure just slowly apply until the two sections split a little. Once split work your way around with a screw driver separating the casing as you go. Once done pull the casing off, you have to do this squarely as there are three internal metal dowels, the actual magnetic force is not that great so should be relatively easy to achieve.

So now its apart I can see one of the coils in the Strator is black, guess that's my problem or a very big part of it anyway. Time to order a replacement along with a new gasket, who ever said motorcycling was cheap!

[Chris Canning]

Interesting that this should crop again and again,I had conversation with a couple of mates today who run a local bike repair place,about the same problem,and I suggested that it may well be linked to how many miles you do between oil changes,which they suggested could be very likely,as most folk ain't exactly keen on spending anymore than they have to.

My Tiger has 35,000 on it,in that time it's had at least 15 oil changes if not more as I never leave old oil in it over winter,whilst it hasn't gone pop yet and there's still plenty of time!!!,certainley a thought.

[dino246]

If you dont have a voltage gauge on the bike it is a must to monitor the charging situation.

I have almost 19k miles and have done oil changes every 3-4k miles with the factory speced mobile one 10-40 synthetic.

What I think happens is the heat generated in the stator is allowed to heat soak and burn off the varnish that insulates the windings.

The probelm is heat, not oil.

The placement and type of Regulator/Rectifier is also a problem. Move it to some part of the bike to get more air flow and update it to a MOSFET R/R and not the old Shunt style unit, you also get 50-70 watts of additional power due to the greater efficiancy of the MOSFET R/R.

After my Stock Stator died I chose to remove the black powder coating that is on the stator cover which allows for the heat to be disipated out into the air.

Some may think its extreme, but I added some aluminum cooling vains to the outside of the cover to help cool the stator cover and thus the heat with in the stator cover would be drawn out.

I just took a 1500 mile trip and the charging system was 13.85-14.65 the whole time and although the cover was hot to the touch it would cool off very quick.
 If the heat is allowed to stay with in the cover and bake the stator it is only a matter of time before the thin varnish insulation brakes down and the adjasent coils touch and the shorting begins, the oil alone will not brake down the varnish.

One last thins, reduce the electrical load on the system. I converted all of the incandesent bulbs to LED which droped the load to one tenth of the origional load.

[Chris Canning]

Well is the problem is heat mine should have died a death 10 years ago,becuase it has spent the majority of it's life in the southern climes of europe mostly at 90mph plus,to the point it has been that hot and bothered it's even spat it's dummy out through header tank and left a pool of water a 1ft across.

[dino246]

10 years of heat, makes me wonder. either way if you have ever been in stop and go traffic, touch the stator cover and see how hot it gets, its not just heat from the engine but heat from the stator.

Eveh removing the powder coating would be a good move in the right direction.

[Mustang]

it's not heat or oil that causes the problem it is sub-standard enamel (not varnish) insulation on the wire that is used in the windings of the stator .

the breakdown of the enamel is caused by several things , bad enamel, dirty wire that the enamel has a hard time curing to, to thin of a coating on the wire ,wire that has been processed wrong etc etc . ( I used to work for a company that make copper magnet wire that is used in windings )
it's the same thing that happens to the gill coils on the steamers ..........the enamel breaks down with age and gets cracks in the insulation which lets the internal windings in the coil short and actually burn the wire in two causing the current to have to jump the gap until it no longer can and then failure .
In the case of the stators it leaves the copper touching each other , which shorts to ground and now you have at least one of the three legs not producing current anymore .

the bean counters at triumph obviously sourced the cheapest stators they could that were made with sub par wire, and like everything you get what you pay for.

[dino246]

Mustang, that makes sense.

My dad used to rewind electric motors and his advise when my stator died was that just replacing it with an aftermarket stator was a fix in its self simply because of the better quality components and greater care in manufacturing.

I installed a Ricks stator and did the mods to the cover, I am paranoid of another failure when im out in the middle of nowhere.

Only time will tell.

[Chris Canning]

Mustang, that makes sense.

My dad used to rewind electric motors and his advise when my stator died was that just replacing it with an aftermarket stator was a fix in its self simply because of the better quality components and greater care in manufacturing.

I installed a Ricks stator and did the mods to the cover, I am paranoid of another failure when im out in the middle of nowhere.

Only time will tell.

Maybe,exactly how old are the bikes with the problem,mine is one of the first 955's off the track,before the bean counters got to it!!.

[dino246]

Mine is a 2006 with engine code 270XXX. a late model 955i and the stator died at 18k miles with 10k miles with the new MOSFET R/R and the LED lights and ofcourse the sasquatch mod.

[Chris Canning]

May 2001 electrics are just the way it was built untouched,on it's third battery and only took the second one off because I felt like it in 11 years 4 months.

[chinchliffe]

The old GS Suzukis used to suffer the same thing with electrical/charging problems. If they were run low on oil or went without regular oil changes the stators/alternators would burn out.

[oxnsox]

I'm with Mustang  on this.  It's the insulation breaking down... maybe a poor or bad batch or QC  issue  as it doesn't  affect everyone.
Putting cooling fins on the cover would have a pretty marginal  effect as you're still connected to  the crankcase and all that heat.....
Wouldn't recommend taking the powdercoating off. The black will help dissipate the heat better me thinks. But more importantly the bare alloy will oxidize and become less efficient at transferring the heat.

Reducing the load on the system has no affect if you're sticking with the standard  RR as by  design it runs at full load always. Best way to reduce the load is to fit a mosfet RR as it limits the load on the stator to just over the actual requirements.

Remember, Heat in the stator is due to being attached to a heat source and the electrical load. With a standard setup you can't change any of that.

[Chris Canning]

You need a list of folk who have a problem and the age of the bike,to help look for the common denominator,because I don't recall too many folk with early bikes with this problem,or are there??.