Any triples experts in the house?

[RALPHARAMA]

I have a customers 350 S2 in and it's driving me mad, with a charging issue.

According to the Kawasaki manual it is a three phase alternator, and so one should be able to replace the reg and rec with a solid state reg/rec.

I advised the customer as such and he bought a reg/ rec from a triples specialist supplier, who told him this was the one to have. I fitted it for him and it didn't help.

I explained to the customer that with poor charging, buggered wiring aside there are usually three possibilities, the reg/rec, the windings and occasionally the permanent magnetic rotor.

Given the reg/didn't cure the problem then the next most likely was the windings. although their resistance was OK, I have often known windings with seemingly good impedance when measured with a meter not give the goods? Sometimes with Zeds I have had them seemingly produce good A/C voltage off load but still not charge under load, so it's not always easy to diagnose problems. To me the A/C off load voltage seemed very low, so I suggested that he have the windings re done by West Country Windings.

When they came back there was still low A/C off load voltage. Given the rotor had some serious hammer marks in it, it wasn't impossible that the magnets inside were broken, so he bought an NOS rotor.

Still low off load A/C volts. West Country Windings sent us another winding which they claimed had extra wire on which made it better than standard. I was still getting a low A/C off load voltage. WCW gave me an idea of the sort of voltage they would expect at tickover and this fell short.

The engine which had been rebuilt by a Kawasaki triples specialist was making a very nasty noise, so I suggested that he get the engine fixed and ask them what they thought of the output from the alternator.

They reported that the output seemed fine to them, but they seemed to think that it should have the standard reg and rec combination.

I have fitted a supposedly good reg and rec to it and it does now charge but break even charging ie where the charging matched the consumption by the ignition etc, happens at 4000 revs which seems a bit crap to me. As the engine is running in I didn't dare experiment to see where that would happen with the head light on!

WCW said that the alternator outputs are not equal, which flies in the face of the wiring diagram in the manual. The colours are yellow, pink, white I think. The rectifier isn't coded colours, but the regulator is.

Can any one help ?