markmakeitso
XS400 Enthusiast
Hello all,
New here, been lurking on occasion for awhile.
A friend bought an old XS400 from another friend of mine, and it's in my garage for some maintenance and troubleshooting. Biggest issue right now is very weird readings at the battery while running. My meter (a cheap but decent Craftsman one) flickers too fast to get a good reading. It appears to charge okay, as a minute or two after running it will show around 12.55 at the battery. A cheap little digital readout we zip tied to the instrument cluster also shows wild fluttering, and maybe crapped out on us recently. Strangely enough if I put some jumper cables to a car battery on the ground next to the bike I get pretty good voltage readings at that battery, but the wild fluctuations are still present at the bike battery itself.
It has a Rick's integrated R/R on it, which at first glance appears to be installed nicely and correctly. The 3 pin connector to the regulator has an unpopulated black wire, which I believe is fine since the larger black wire at the 6 pin connector would be shared anyway. It also has a relay for the ignition coil supply, so the normal 12V supply just turns on the relay which passes fused power directly from the battery to the coils. Both nice upgrades if they work properly. Think it would be prudent to also pass +12 to the field winding from that relay?
Quick resistance checks of the stator and field winding seemed okay. Next time I get to the garage I plan to check AC readings and perhaps feed a couple fixed voltages to the field winding during operation. May also try another bike battery (current one is a year old, cranks the bike fine, and doesn't self-discharge much if at all). Any other suggestions?
Thanks,
Mark
New here, been lurking on occasion for awhile.
A friend bought an old XS400 from another friend of mine, and it's in my garage for some maintenance and troubleshooting. Biggest issue right now is very weird readings at the battery while running. My meter (a cheap but decent Craftsman one) flickers too fast to get a good reading. It appears to charge okay, as a minute or two after running it will show around 12.55 at the battery. A cheap little digital readout we zip tied to the instrument cluster also shows wild fluttering, and maybe crapped out on us recently. Strangely enough if I put some jumper cables to a car battery on the ground next to the bike I get pretty good voltage readings at that battery, but the wild fluctuations are still present at the bike battery itself.
It has a Rick's integrated R/R on it, which at first glance appears to be installed nicely and correctly. The 3 pin connector to the regulator has an unpopulated black wire, which I believe is fine since the larger black wire at the 6 pin connector would be shared anyway. It also has a relay for the ignition coil supply, so the normal 12V supply just turns on the relay which passes fused power directly from the battery to the coils. Both nice upgrades if they work properly. Think it would be prudent to also pass +12 to the field winding from that relay?
Quick resistance checks of the stator and field winding seemed okay. Next time I get to the garage I plan to check AC readings and perhaps feed a couple fixed voltages to the field winding during operation. May also try another bike battery (current one is a year old, cranks the bike fine, and doesn't self-discharge much if at all). Any other suggestions?
Thanks,
Mark
