Would the rectifier mod have prevented this from happening?

https://www.kawasakiforums.com/forum...y-speed-34470/

 

As far as a preventative measure, I can only guess. You are suggesting a bad (perhaps intermittent) ground caused a condition by which the diode was exposed to voltage which destroyed it?

Only a forensic examination of the regulator/rectifier by an experienced tech - read: NOT ME - could do this; I suspect it would still be impossible owing to the packing of the diodes in epoxy so they can disperse the heat.

My GUESS, after reading the 18-page thread? I strongly suspect this was the cause of the early demise of my RR and battery. My stator is putting out 69 VAC from each of the 3-phase wires, so it's nominal. Regulator/rectifiers don't have moving components. I suspect they fail when exposed to varying grounds/fluctuating voltages which give less-than-optimal opportunities to produce a steady state exit DC voltage of 13.8 to 14.5 VDC.

I shall ground my new, $100 RR separately per the (confusing) thread (BTW: the factory part is $241). The reason why so many posters were grounding their harness rather than the component itself was because of the imprecise language used by the posters, which was really never corrected, plus the shoddy photography.

I may choose to correct this problem in a new post with photos, and if I am competent enough I hope it will become a "sticky."

 

I'm at over 8 years on the stock battery.

 

I do keep mine on a battery maintainer a few days a week, swapping back and forth between the KLX and the XT 225

 

So I just got told that I have to put an Interstate or a Yuasa battery in the bike or it will eat up regulator/rectifiers.

Is this true?

 

Who told you that?
I cannot believe that is true. Forum members have used many different batteries and I don't recall anyone else bringing that up.

 

Yeah, I never heard that concern. Who provided that info? On a side note, I'm a true believer on the Yuasa battery as far as service and longevity are concerned. But...these battery discussions can be like oil threads...LOL!

 

Kawasaki service advisor at Longmont Kawasaki.

Smelled like bull-ony to me; batteries are just power reserves. They don't feed back power to the RR. The RR detects how much charge they're taking and shunts away the excess to heat.

I think I just got a bad RR and it killed the prior battery, so the prior owner replaced it without doing any diagnostic work. 18.7 VDC will kill a battery after a while.

 

Your nose is correct. It's bull. If you keep "any" brand of battery with a shorted cell in the bike for too long it will kill the rectifier/regulator. The rr is sized to support the power needed to recharge a battery that was just discharged by the starter. If you try to pull full power from it for an extended time, it's gonna fry. A fully charged battery is 12.7V. The charging system puts out more voltage than the battery has, so the current flow is "to" the battery. There is no way a "good" battery can fry the rr. Even if it's an off brand. Feeding 18.7V will fry a battery in no time at all. You'll boil it dry and get that egg smell. The kawi spec is a tad high for the rr output IMO. You need above 13.5V volts to charge with 14.5V being the max you want to see. Kawi spec is up to 15.2V which I wouldn't be happy with, but they consider it ok.

Yuasa is a good brand, but any brand can have issues. Their large sealed lead acid business was sold to Enersys 10 years ago. Same factory same quality as far as I can tell. I installed 800 batteries in one project and a year later 1 went bad. It didn't fail, just leaked. This is hard to do when you're a VRLA battery... but it happens.

 

UPDATE: I ordered a Rick's Motorsport RR yesterday. We shall see how it goes. I'll do a full report when it comes in and I put it into the bike.