Dual stator wiring

kennyb wrote: Thanks people! Okay that's what I thought Just wanted to be on the safe side before I created a firework show in my garage or between my legs at 70 mph :ohmy: Thanks

That makes for some rather hilariously crazy thought bubbles Kenny. Worse worse how could it be worse it was just a fart. :lol:

......My 2 cents worth on this topic of discussion is..... start wiring in something ,that is "new territory" without asking a simple question to people that may have" been there done that"..... next thing ya know is..... you've gone and damaged a perfectly working SEALED UNIT,of which you have no control over ,once the damage is done....break out the ol'wallet.... ......This 1300 that I bought in July has a idiot light
"charging system" light lit on the dash...... but with meter testing ....I'm charging.....and the battery never goes dead...
You did well by asking ....and I am gonna test my charging system more thoroughly before taking my bike across the country in June......Lucky for me, I have trkbldr as a possible "shout out" as I'm heading to Denver (or back) from Toledo... :lol: ..............tony

Over on the Gold Wing forums they have done quite a bit with grafting in automotive alternators external to the engine because the stock GW units just can't keep up with all the cruiser-type accessories that guys want to use, like heated riding suits, heated grips or gloves, tons of even LED lights, loud radios, hotter ignitions, etc. Of course, the GW flat four/six engines lend themselves nicely to tapping into the end of the crankshaft to drive an alternator. A good small car alternator puts out about 55 amps, and in the same size package they can be found up to about 100amps, using just one wire to feed the battery. Fortunately for us Voyager 1300 owners, our stock dual alternator systems give us 45 amps, which is plenty for most applications.

Although my previous Voyager had the stock system and it powered the bike and sidecar accessories just fine, I am looking at trying to figure out just how I could add an automotive one-wire 100amp system. My hack will have a blower for the heater system as well as a suspension ride-height electrical screw jack. I also plan to convert to all LED lights and adding maybe a few more, so that should actually drop some of the lighting needs. I will also be running an electrical water pump in place of the mechanical one, so that will add significantly to my electrical power needs.

I am asking why it is necessary to add more power on a simple street bike. The stock, single unit should be more than enough to power all of the lights and ignition. What am I missing?

The big reason I am asking is that a regulator looks at the battery voltage to know how much power to produce. The dual ZN1300 regulators are coordinated in some way to work together. Without a detailed description of how they do this, I would be VERY leery about tying a stock KZ system with an added-on ZN second alternator! MAYBE if you added the whole ZN system to a KZ's engine and made sure it spliced into the KZ's wiring harness exactly as it does the ZN's. Without that detailed explanation of how the two regulators do what they do, you are making some possibly dangerous assumptions.

Some of they guys over on the GW forum learned the hard way that you cannot add an external alternator and run it parallel with the stock system to charge the battery! Each one tries to keep a minimum voltage, and they jockey back and forth rapidly in that effort, eventually burning out both of them.

Unless someone here has actually done this modification, I would be hesitant to do it. Not enough electrical info to make critical decisions. And, like RickG says, better be really careful of farts! Your bike's name COULD become "The Ignitor!".

To be honest, a big reason GW owners add an alternator the way they do is that the only way to fix the stock stator is to pull the motor. This is completely due to the way the flat-4 (or six, but by then they had the power situation figured out) is laid out in the frame- there's no way to access the stator otherwise.

I'm slightly curious of the "correct" way to resolve this. I've toyed with the idea of adding an extra stator to my '80, but the more I read, the bigger a PITA it seems to be.

I'll be keeping an eye on this tread, should anything new come up.

Even the newer Gold Wings have just 350 watts (about 30 amps) of power from their alternators, and with so much power-eating equipment being added to cruisers, that's just not enough, aside from being so hard to replace their stators.

Lucien, I am curious what it is that needs to be "resolved". As I understand it the bike in question is a street bike, not a full-dress, accessory festooned cruiser, right? I am wondering just what the need is to increase the power output on such a bike. Yes! Without much electrical info it is a PITA!

Actually, I would try tying the two stators' windings together in parallel for increased output potential, then use a rectifier bank feeding into a 100 amp GM alternator's regulator. That wouldn't be hard at all. At least we KNOW what it's handling capacity is and that it would handle anything the two Kawasaki stators could produce. As we already know, together they total 45 amps in stock configuration on a ZN1300 Voyager. The problem for non-electrically-minded folks might be syncing the phases correctly to make them truly parallel to be able to feed into a single rectifier bank and a single regulator.

Well, after this little discussion I at least know what I will be trying if/when my regulators/rectifiers crap out on my Voyager. later this next summer I may even try this setup as a bread-board experiment to verify if it will work.

My mistake on the later GW outputs! The newer 1800's have around 85 amps and replacement alternators go as high as 150 amps! That's even quite a bit for larger cars!

I was thinking about the 1200 and early 1500 GW's with 320-350watts (about 30 amps).