Back on Three Wheels

Finally. on the road again. It really felt good to get out and about after almost two weeks. This was the road test after performing the maintenance and replacing the alternator and it was a beautiful morning to be out and about. It was a very warm 26°F but just for testings, turned on the heated grips, had the heated jacket liner and gloves on max and the battery voltage while running never went below 14.2 volts. This seems to have been a great upgrade.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to an Airhead tech day to see what was involved replacing the head bearings. He had invested in all of the bearing pullers to simplify the job. It turned out that the simplest way to get the bearing races in was the old fashion brass drift and a hammer. It was challenging to use the tool since it was an RT with the large "barn door" fairing and windshield. When I returned home, the box arrived from Euro Motoelectrics with my new alternator system. I had previously spent Friday night removing all remnants of the original alternator including unused wiring. The old rotor popped off easily from the front of the crankshaft using the special tool provided. Since one of the other local Airheads wanted to see what was involved with the installation, I spent the remainder of the evening putting the rest of the bike back together.

Here is the newly installed rotor and stator and note that there are only two wires from from the stator and out of the top of the engine, No slip rings or carbon brushes to energize the rotor as it is a permanent magnet. I believe that simpler is better and I hope that translates to more reliable. I had to remove a bunch of stuff again as I had forgotten to put one bolt that supports the back of the starter. The most difficult part of the installation was installing the stator (the steel plates wound with copper wire) with the aluminum rings as it kept wanting to "stick" to the permanent magnets in the rotor. The rectifier/voltage regulator is heavily finned and needs to be installed where it has a chance of staying cool. It is pictured below installed in the recommended location behind the battery next to the rear wheel. Just to the left is the triangular plastic side cover right under the seat. In fact, this post covers part of their warranty documentation as you need photos of the installation.

All that was left was the wiring. All of the pieces were included and I took advantage of the opportunity to cut all of the wire ties under the tank and reroute all of the wires, old and new, to clean things up. With all of the things added, it had become kind of a mess and even the original wiring wasn't routed correctly. Now it is much cleaner. All the new wires are now housed in plastic split loom and securely tied to the top tube. For the alternator, two wires were run from the stator, one from the hot side of a coil, one for the GEN light on the dash, ground and a fused connection to the battery. I'm still using the positive battery post on the Odyssey battery for all of the connections and there seems to be a lot of them, perhaps too many. It's probably time for a fuse box or some sort of power distribution solution.

Anyway, except for a quick functional test last night, this morning was the test ride. There was some initial concern when the battery voltage ran up to 14.5v shortly after starting but it settled down to about 13.5v at idle. With the stock system it was usually south of 12v at idle as nothing was coming off of the alternator. I rode around a bit including a stop at the turnout at the university of the first photo and after arriving back home and shutting everything off. I was still seeing 13.0v. Before, I was lucky to see 12.5v indicating a 75% charged battery. This is closer to 100% and even the starter sounds better. Maybe its imaginary but I think that this is a worthwhile upgrade for anyone with an old airhead. I had been thinking of doing this upgrade for about 5 years but as long as the original alternator worked, couldn't justify it.

On another note, I just heard from Aerostitch and they are waiting for the grey material for the bulk of the suit. I am surprised to hear this as I thought it was made in Southeast Asia and they just imported it. If I wanted a different color they could get it completed earlier.

Posted with Blogsy