[twins4life]

I took my wife to a poker run last year and she won 1st place. She wanted a bike so I made a deal with her. She would complete a MC safety rider class and I would buy her a bike.

I choose a VN-750 and she loves it and has put 7,000 miles on it this summer.

Question:

All I read about (it seems) is how often stators burn out and that there is no way to fix or stop this problem.

1. Is this true?
2. How often do they fail?

One more question, it seems the regulator clamps the voltage by firing a thyristor and shorting the stator put put to ground once the regulator reaches float voltage. True?

 

[whistle clean]

I took my wife to a poker run last year and she won 1st place. She wanted a bike so I made a deal with her. She would complete a MC safety rider class and I would buy her a bike.

I choose a VN-750 and she loves it and has put 7,000 miles on it this summer.

Question:

All I read about (it seems) is how often stators burn out and that there is no way to fix or stop this problem.

1. Is this true?
2. How often do they fail?

One more question, it seems the regulator clamps the voltage by firing a thyristor and shorting the stator put put to ground once the regulator reaches float voltage. True?

1. Apparently it does happen and from what I have read on the forums a couple of things to do to help minimize problems are:

A. Remove goats belly (muffler that ties both exhaust pipes together as it causes alot of heat on the rectifier and battery.

B. Replace the wet cell battery with a maintenance free battery as there are alot of issues related to a wet cell battery i.e. overflow of acid into the battery box causing corrosion and a weak start which in turn causes problems with the stator.

2. How often it happens I'm not sure. Maybe someone here has some statistics about that. Just seem's that many have experienced one or more problems related to the two mentioned items.

That's about all I can answer and am sure others with more knowledge and experience will offer their thoughts on this.

 

[Red Baron]

You can find more on gYpSy's web site about this. She says stocks go on the average around 20,000 miles or so. Replacement ones go around 10K or so she thinks. My oem went at 10,700 and I have 12,000 on the replacement one, so go figure.. All bikes with stators are prone to stator failures, some last longer than others, no one seems to be able to pin point one reason but he current theorys are excessive demand and overheating causing a breakdown of the winding insulations.. Excessive demand being caused by weak batteries or electrical system problems, overheating caused by excessive demand, dirty oil or low oil. If you search the web for motorcycles and stator failure you will see that it is a common problem. The thing that makes it a biatch for a lot of motorcycles, not just the vn750, is the fact that you have to pull or tilt the motor to get at the stator to replace it. Darn stupid engineering in my book. At any rate , you can buy the modified stator cover from www.tocmanufacturing.com , so when you replace your stator, you'll only have to pull the engine once. The next time it will be a 30 minute job to replace the stator.

 

[twins4life]

Thanks for the reply. I did a Google search and found this page: http://www.turbomotorcycles.org/TMIOA/TechHelp_Honda_Stator.html

It has a lot of good info. I even found a fill in the blank site for GL1200 owners because of frequent failures.

The idea of rewinding with few turns of a heavier gauge wire sounds interesting.

She wants to take a MC vacation next year but I'm almost afraid to take it far from home.

Thanks for the link to the modified side cover, that may be an option.