Ive fried the regulator

[thebarlow]

My 883 chop runs out of tax saturday so its comin off the road for a full rebuild. I didn't build it. I know the battery is not chargin when runnin but I'll sort this later. So I've been startin the bike off a car battery just to get it runnin, stop engine, and then put the bike battery on knowin it will fire up and not drain it to much. Every 4 or 5 days I charge the bike battery on trickle. I've been doin this for months. Now then, wednesday I connect the car battery, eventually it starts (its allways struggled) cuts out and I notice thick smoke comin from the regulator. I switch off and remove key. Shit, now its on fire, glowin red, and I'm startin to panic as its chained to my trike. Disconnect live to battery and it stops. Touch live to battery and it starts to glow again. Now why did it fry the regulator when switched off ? Bear in mind whoever wired it may not have done so correctly but its been ok till now. Cheers.

[daddykemp]

Me thinks dodgy wiring and using a car battery
Look up the search facility (in the blue strip at the top of this page) there are quite a few articles about this sort of thing written by people who know a damn site more about it than I do

[kib]

Quote/ [I notice thick smoke comin from the regulator. I switch off and remove key. Shit, now its on fire, glowin red, and I'm startin to panic as its chained to my trike. Disconnect live to battery and it stops. Touch live to battery and it starts to glow again. Now why did it fry the regulator when switched off ? ]

The reulator is usually conected directly to the battery live side with the wire running under the engine.

A similar thing happenend to my shovel a few years back it was being picked up for a photo shoot for abike mag, I wasn't there at the time.
As they loaded the bike on to their trailler they managed to catch the wire from the regulator which usually runs from the front under the bike then up to the battery, this caused the wire to short out and thick smoke appeared from the regulator and then from the shorting wire which caught fire.
Luckly the wire was cut from its connection at the live side of the battery.

The only damage was to the wire, once replaced bike ran as good as new without damage to the regulator. You may have been loosing your charge through a bad connection.