Wow this is bad; R1 'generator' issue?

[imadraver]

At Road Atlanta, my R1 wasn’t charging the battery.

I just got a chance to look deeper into the issue. I tested all the resistances, they were fine. I was thinking it may actually be a bad voltage regulator. It would start fine with a fully charged battery but I couldn't get any higher voltage reading at the battery or any voltage on the leads going into the voltage regulator, while running and holding around 5K rpm.

Immediately when I got the generator cover off, I could see it was really bad and I asked Michelle to video it. I just put the cover back on and need to read the manual a bit more to see what may have been chewed up. Any ideas on this?

 

[Thunderace]

I have and '05 and I have pulled off the generator a couple times. I've never had problems with the charging system unless I was running a lightweight battery. I went back to a lead-acid battery and it's been fine ever since. Those little rubber pieces are sort of like a cush drive for the generator. What I have done twice so far in my time is accidentally dropped them down the opening when I was installing or deinstalling the generator, I can't remember which. Luckily, I was able to fish them out each time.

From my perspective, a new generator is in your future. The internal cylinder and gear plate look fine. You will definitely need new cush drive pieces. My only fear is that you have contaminants in your lower end now. You may want to take off the oil pan and check what is in there. You most likely have pieces of the old cush drive and other contaminants.

 

[tad158]

Yep, definitely drop the oil pan. There is likely crud on the screen of the oil pick up. There is a bunch of good info on the R1 forum about this issue.

 

[imadraver]

Holy shiz this has been nutz. I found circa 04 R1 generators are susceptible to this happening, where the epoxy breaks that holds the generator magnets on the rotor and then they all get obliterated. Dropping the oil pan required removing the exhaust midpipe and 2 of the bolts were rusted and fused. One stripped and one head broke off trying to remove them. I had to cut off the remaining bolt heads, then drill them out, then retap the threads. Hand drilling hardened steel bolts out is not fun. Then I had to clean out all the little generator magnet bits. Being magnetic, little pieces were sticking everywhere in the lower engine compartment and I had to fish them out with my magnetic grabber, compressed air, brake parts cleaner spray and lots of paper towels...a slow and painful process. I'm currently waiting on parts (generator dampers, generator gasket, oil pan gasket) and all should arrive Tue, just in time for me to get everything back together and off to NCBike! Fingers, toes and weiner crossed that it all comes together.

 

[imadraver]

Clean oil pan....mmm good.

 

[tad158]

If it were me I would run it a bit then do an oil change, drop the pan and make sure everything is still clean.

 

[Romans Eight]

Great work on the solo attempt and success imadriver!


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[wmhjr]

FYI, in the future, "Ricks Stators" (http://ricksmotorsportelectrics.com - and NOT "Rickys" or anything else) have always been great as replacements for questionable OEM units in a few of my bikes. In my sport tourer (CBR1100xx) the OEM stators are known to be a bit sketchy. The Ricks unit was the desired replacement.

 

[mpusch]

FYI, in the future, "Ricks Stators" (http://ricksmotorsportelectrics.com - and NOT "Rickys" or anything else) have always been great as replacements for questionable OEM units in a few of my bikes. In my sport tourer (CBR1100xx) the OEM stators are known to be a bit sketchy. The Ricks unit was the desired replacement.

I've heard very mixed reports on Rick's stuff. Even vendors saying that they have a fairly high failure rate. That said, I had my Daytona's stator go on me a few months ago and replaced it with a Rick's. No issues with it yet, but I also bought a backup OEM stator just in case!

 

[wmhjr]

One problem is that many of the bad reports from Ricks are actually from "Rickys" and another vendor. I've had 2 OEM stators go bad on my Blackbird. I've had zero failures of Ricks. A lot depends on the OEM design to begin with. Much like the regulator issue.