Planet Minis

seyfarth

How do you wire the regulator correctly?
I wound the stator on my '91 Z50R and it blows the lights.
I bought a Hooper Imports 12V regulator and wired it as follows:
I have the power from the stator going to the right top terminal and splitting to the lights.
The regulator is wired to ground from the bottom right terminal.

The output at idle is near 12V. At rev it hits about 40V.

seyfarth

It is, in fact, a regulator/rectifier.
Here is the revision of my diagram that Hooper sent back to me. It seems I had it hooked correctly?
He said I was WAY OFF. He erased the split wire to the lights. Maybe this doesn't work the same as other regulators? Seems odd.

It may not be working properly

seyfarth

Here is my regulator installation. The green wire goes to ground, the yellow goes to the rotor output and splits to the headlight and the taillight (PLEASE NOTE I INVERTED MY CONNECTIONS IN THE PIC. I was rushing to get the pictures last night and hooked them up wrong. I will fix this tonight). The lights are unswitched and there is no battery.



In this picture the yellow wire is the output from my rewound stator. It puts out up to 40V at redline.
It is shown unplugged in the following pic:


The following shows the green ground lead coming from the regulator and bolted to the frame. The red wire is a temporary ground wire I use to hook up my meter while I try to debug this issue.
The power wire from the stator is shown plugged here. The dangling wire is the lead to the headlight. I unplugged it to get my meter readings:

fatcaaat

My approach is as follows:


1. Take the Rectifier and fasten it securely to the frame and make sure that the body is somehow in contact with bare metal.
2. Take the green ground wire and make sure it is also secured to the frame.
3. Take your output wire from your stator and put it where the lower left plug is. Take the upper left and wire that into your lights. That will work.

As far as running the hot yellow "in line" with the regulator, that seems to never work out for me as I end up blowing bulbs all the time too. As a matter of fact, I am now running two of these items in the same way as I describe above on one of my bikes so I can have aux power.

The power coming from your motor should have a super hot and a hot. The super hot is supposed to go to the lower left and then come out of the upper left. The plain jane hot is to be in line with the yellow.

When you wrapped the coil, do you have one line coming out or two? One automatically is "super hot". If you have two, is one hotter than the other?

seyfarth

Thanks Fatcaaat! This is valuable info.
I didn't know I needed a second power lead. I followed the instructions from this site and he didn't mention that:
www.cjvcook.com
What would I solder the second lead to? Right now the lead is hooked up to the available terminal at the end of the magnet wire wrap I performed.

Is this what you have on yours?

110streetlegal

yea the way you have it wired the regulator is useless, you have the the headlight and tail wired directly to the hotwire, you need to hook them up to the regulated 12v prong on the regulator.

fatcaaat

Your new picture is correct, however because you wrapped your lighting the way you did, you now only have a super hot. Basically, you should have kept a foot of wire on both sides of the coil before you wrapped it then you could have two leads...one for the battery charging circuit (that you are not using) and one for the lighting circuit. My guess is that you are generating twice the power and your regulator/rectifier is not able to handle it. I think they are only designed to handle about 55 watts. You are probably putting about 80-90 through it wired the way you are.

Try my version and see what happens and report back.

fatcaaat

You are actually incorrect. In line is regulated but not rectified. If you put the input output that is regulated and rectified. Its blowing bulbs because he is putting too much juice through the inline approach it to handle it, or you are using bulbs not compatible with AC circuitry.

seyfarth

Again great information. I'm not sure how the wrapping would go with extra magnet wire on each end. Could you clarify, please?

As far as the lights I am using, they are automotive. The front is a halogen driving light from Pep Boys and the rear is an antique repro tailight, generally used on choppers. So, maybe they are DC only?
I will try your setup and report back. thanks again.

seyfarth

Thanks 110. I followed various wiring charts that called for a split wire to the lights, the stator and the regulator.
I know it looks wrong. That is what I thought too, but the guys that did that had good results.
I think what fatcaaat is saying may be correct. I may be generating too much voltage.

I am wondering how CVJCOOK keeps from blowing his lights, however.
Check his instructions, which I followed to the "T".
www.cjvcook.com

fatcaaat

BTW, I'm guessing that this person is using this type of regulator that can handle the juice. 12V REGULATOR ESPECIALLY FOR HIGH OUTPUT STATORS 75W AND HIGHER (215A)

seyfarth

Awesome! Thanks for the link.
I have to measure the wattage coming from the stator. If your previous hookup doesn't work I will have to get one of these.

seyfarth

THANKS FATCAAAT! This setup worked. As a precaution I added a fuse into the ground line. It is the fuse that came with the halogen headlight.
Tomorrow I am getting a new halogen bulb, and I will be all set.
So now anybody out there that has a 4-terminal regulator knows how to wire it up. Thanks again. I owe you a beer.

seyfarth

AHH! I take it back. I spoke too soon.
I rode the bike around the block, basking in the glow of my $5 halogen headlight, and everything seemed fine.
Once I got home I let the bike idle and POP! the headlight went out. The taillight stayed on, but it was getting brighter and brighter, so I shut the bike off.

The fuse was useless.
I am getting the regulator that Fatcaat recommended. Let's see how that goes.
It does seem that the Hooper regulator can't handle things.

seyfarth

UPDATE:
I bought the high output regulator and fit it on my Z50R. It now works flawlessly.
I tested it on the bike and the voltage hovered around 11 at idle and, surprisingly went down to about 8V at rev. The light did get brighter though, but held the brightness.
I took a few laps around the block and nothing failed.
The hookup is the same as my first graphic, but the new regulator only has two wires, yellow for the power and a black one for ground. The power wire coming from the motor splits to the lights and to the regulator. The black wire from the regulator goes to ground.
I will add a graphic to the thread when I get back to my computer that has Photoshop.
I am now happy.
A twist in the plot though.
When I removed the halogen bulb to replace it with a new one, the bulb wasn't burned out, which leads me to believe that the previous regulator could have worked. I probably had a bad connection somewhere. Should have checked. Still, the intensity fluctuated a lot and I was not sure that the voltage wasn't spiking at full rev. I can't test it statically in my garage because my exhaust is too loud and probably would disturb the neighbors.
Anyway, this setup works.
Cheers and thanks to all.

50rider340

This is the one I run on my scoot and run everything inline from the hot going it and out like in the first diagram along with the ground. I have only burned out a rear bulb once running this set up.

The other regulator you were using I have always had terrible luck with. No matter how many times I would wire it i would end up with fried light bulbs.

Glad to here you upgraded and its working great.

ben_wingove

nice