HELP! Need Stator / RR for 6th gen, stranded in Melbourne, Fl area on road trip!

Took the 2003 VFR with the wife and her FZ6R on four day road trip.

Long story short, VFR died on me at a light. Looked under the left fairing and RR/Stator connection is fried, battery is 1 week old (Yausa). I have a VFRness and this was a fairly new RR, but original stator.

Connection is totally toast. Went to Lowes, but some crimps and manually cut and spliced stator to RR connection, but battery is dead from trying to start the bike, so I am not sure if it would work anyways. I am at a hotel next to where I broke down and have the battery on a tender and will try in the morning. But what is really going to screw me up is parts.

Soonest I could get them shipped would be monday, to be here tuesday. I really need to get back on the road, so I am hoping someone has a RR/Stator they can sell me and I will order them a backfill.

I am broke down just South of Patrick AFB. Melbourne Honda looks to be open on Sundays, but something tells me they may not have the parts. I had a Ricks RR in it, and would prefer to use the same again.......but at this point I will take anything I can get. Is anyone able to assist? Ideas?

Signal

 

Oh man that is suck.....Sorry to hear Signal
Hope someone got a spare can ship out to you.

 

Whether someone can help me out or not, I think i am going to buy an extra RR/Stator that way if I or someone else needs it they can ping me and at least I can help them. I vow to do this, but I really need someone else who has parts now.....ugh.

 

Are you sure you need a stator if the connection was fried, but now fixed? Can you charge the battery and start the bike tomorrow? Not sure if you have access to a place to charge the battery or can buy a cheap multimeter to see if the charging system is holding up with the repair.

 

nearfeezing, I am not sure if the stator is fried. I just know that replacing stator/rr is a good one two punch. The RR was replaced with a Ricks in the last 1000 miles, battery is less than 500 mi on it (new Yaesu). Starter harness is less than 500mi on it, VFRness installed, all connectors/relays were cleaned very recently in tracing down other weird issues.

It's possible it starts up tomorrow. I have the Battery on a tender, and I will throw it in the bike and give it a whirl. If not, then I would rather buy stator and RR than just RR. I have never seen anyone pull a stator after 30k+ and have it look good. I have done "The drill", so many times i have lost count. Each time the stator checked out fine. But I noticed the yellow wires were HOT. Connector was perfect, no burning, so I took apart the pins and always kept them very clean. I had a RR fail, with burnt connector (but only RR side not stator side), and replaced it. I am just wrapping up a 500mi trip in pretty bad Florida heat, bike was running good though about 183-212F the whole time. I am hoping for the best but planning for the worst. I appreciate any help, thanks.

 

Fingers crossed your repairs to the connector and an overnight charge will be enough to get you home without entrusting the bike to a recovery truck.

Your post sounds ominously familiar - parts on these bikes seem to go wrong when the going gets HOT. It seems that bits which test out perfectly when the bike is cold, but can let you down once it gets really hot. The prime suspects are connectors and insulation on stator windings and diodes inside the RR.

Sadly even if your bike starts OK once the battery has been recharged - you may not get far down the road, if the stator windings have fused (it happened to mine and Scubalong).

If the local Honda dealer does not have a stator in stock, it may be worth buying 2 stator cover gaskets. (One plus a spare). That way you can at least check things out whilst the bike is in a safe location (the garage). Pull the stator cover and see if it reveals a crispy fried stator - if you open it up and get that burnt electrical winding smell then you know the stator needs replacement and that bike won't run far before it runs out of juice.

If you can't find a new stator, it may be worth checking to see if there is any local firm that does electrical motor rewinds. These firms tend to have in stock hundreds of reels of suitable replacement grade winding wire. If you are really lucky they may even be able to dismantle and rewind the whole stator for less than the cost of a new one for a few hours labour.

Good luck



SkiMad

 

My fix would be get a meter to see what is happening if the stator is toast, forget trying to sort that quickly it won't happen, How far are you into the 500 mile trip? If you battery comes up ok, I would get another one as a back up, providing you can ride without headlights, disconect the stop lights, pull the bulbs whatever, and make a dash for home, if you battery goes down fit the other one but work out how far you got on the first one to see if you can make it the rest of the way home. As long as you keep moving fans might not kick in. If they do this would certainly cut down your power and range.Or strap a car battery to the seat and you should be good to go, worth a try

 

Very inventive idea - lashing up some sort of meter. If the bike starts OK but then shows a drain - I think you should consider somehow disconnecting those crimped on stator connections - as if the windings have fused internally like mine did, then it could place a huge drain on the battery and your battery won't get you home.


SkiMad

 

Skid, I should have mentioned that, if after testing the charge rate and if no good disconnect the stator wires even if you have to cut them

 

Ok, an update on this.

Thanks to all the information I have learned over the years on this board and the other we all frequent, I am fixed up.

I charged my battery. I couldn't get a full charge or even an 80% charge, as I am using a Battery Tender Jr on the road, and it takes about 16 hours to charge a ~12ah battery at 750ma.......so I figure I was about 70% charged. I got a hotel room not far from where I broke down, $50/night and throw the battery on charge.

I cut away the charred wire, crimped in a splice of 14AWG so it was long enough, and with the battery charged, I was able to make it 128mi more to home! I also was able to stop and start the bike several times. I have not yet pulled the fairing to see how things are looking. I am not sure how much wire I have left on the stator side, I am hoping enough to solder in a splice and heat shrink it nice and leave that as the permanent fix. I can of course check ohms on the stator to make sure there is no shorting going on between the winds before I button that up. I am sure there is a stator in my future, so I will buy one and shelf it with the gasket. RR seems fine, its a Ricks.

I knew exactly where to look when things go south. I bought a nice voltmeter from wiremybike.com a few weeks back and I will be installing that so i can keep an eye on things.

If your bike dash freaks out and you lose power due to fried stator / RR connection, just take a deep breath, head to the hardware store, splice in some wire and clean it up, charge up the battery and hopefully you are as lucky as I was.

Signal

 

Glad to know you are home :thumb:
Take your time and do the drill.....

 

Next time get 100 mile tow at aaa-you could have gone just another 28 miles-then just call the tow truck!

 

Signal, glad you got things worked out and home safe. As for the bike, I highly recommend a new stator and rectifier. *Voice of Experience* Also, the Stator/RR connector is a crap piece, so either cut out it altogether and solder the wires to each other or replace it with something heavy duty.

 

Glad things worked out for you. I'm going to stick my head back into the sand and assume everything is good with my system. When winter comes I will actually read all about the issues and check everything over.

 

From what I can see from all these problems, it seems to all come back to dodgy connectors, they overheat, short out and take everything else with it. Simple fix seems to be ditch the connectors and solder and heat shrink the stator wires and possibly save yourself a lot of grief. If this forum can't come up with a fix, not much hope anywhere. Problem is nobody does these mods before the problem hits them so nobody can say for sure if by just removing the connector would prevent the problem in the first place. If Honda can't fix it we have to. You want to see what the CB Supersport boys are doing, collectively they are making all sorts of parts to not only keep them going, but to improve on the original Honda designs which in a lot of cases were and still are cost base driven

 

I can say so, here's how: In 2010, my Stator/RR fried REAL good (complete with smoke coming from under the gas tank) so I had new OEM RR and aftermarket Stator installed. The aftermarket stator fried 30 minutes after getting the bike from the shop, so it was replaced with OEM unit. When the Honda tech cranked up the bike he was watching for the Stator/RR wires to overload, which they did, and he shutdown before they could cook. Over the following weeks the shop and Honda Corp ran out of ideas so the tech googled the problem, found and tried the Cut Connector/Solder Wires solution and VIOLA, no more overload. Now, I've since installed a VFRNess but the S/RR wires have yet to show any sign of trouble.