Another fried stator

I was on the first day of a trip to Copper Canyon in Chihuahua, Mexico last month when the alternator quit charging. We found  a Honda shop in Cuauhtemoc where the mechanics tried several different stators from other bikes, but no luck. They finally suggested sending my stator on a bus to Ciudad Chihuahua to have it rewound. It was over the weekend, so it took five days to come back. In the meantime the shop rented me a bike so we could complete our trip. When we got back to Cuauhtemoc, my bike had been repaired with the rewound stator and a substitute regulator. It got me home, but it's not quite charging normally. I plan to install a new OEM stator & regulator.

My rental bike: an MPower Roadway (Chinese 200cc dual sport). It was way underpowered, squirrely, and too small for me, but it made it to Batopilas and back.

Sucks to hear about your stator man, are you able to pin point when it went?

How many miles were you on the china bike for? lol I've owned a total of 3 china bikes, all of them were good deals but still absolute garbage. I actually briefly owned a 200 just like that, it made decent power but its quality was sooo gross I doubt if I pushed it over 35 mph.

I don't know exactly when the stator failed. No clues until the bike wouldn't start (after fixing a flat rear tire!). All this in the first few hours of the trip. My WR had around 15,500 miles on the clock when it went.
I put about 500 miles on the MPower, with much of that at WOT!

The rewound stator made it exactly 400 miles before it failed. I had already ordered a new OEM stator and rectifier/regulator, so the bike wasn't down long. I installed the new pieces today, and I have 14.3 volts @ idle now. With the rewound stator I had to rev it to see mid 13s.

What kind of electrical accessories do you have? Just wondering if you were stressing it. My Versys stator lasted 75,000 miles, but I know I overloaded it towards the end of its life.

You might want to read through this: http://www.apriliaforum.com/forums/showthread.php?240785-Facts-about-shunt-based-regulators  OR just buy a series regulator.

As far as I know stators pretty much are delivering full power all the time. The R/R takes the excess power and shunts it to ground generating heat.

If you run a lot of accessories then the R/R is not having to work as hard and may last a bit longer.

If your connected load exceeds the output of the stator then the first thing you should notice is a dead battery since the excess power would be pulled from the battery.

One thing I would look at closely is all the electrical connections from the stator to the R/R and battery. Make sure sure you are not seeing any signs of corrosion at these. My brother went through two stators on his Ninja 650 and on the last one found the connector from the stator to the r/r melted. He eliminated that connector by solder splicing the wires together and has been good for the last three years. If he needs to disconnect either end he will just cut the wires and re-splice/solder as needed.

rsteiger wrote:

As far as I know stators pretty much are delivering full power all the time.  The R/R takes the excess power and shunts it to ground generating heat.

If you run a lot of accessories then the R/R is not having to work as hard and may last a bit longer.

If your connected load exceeds the output of the stator then the first thing you should notice is a dead battery since the excess power would be pulled from the battery.

One thing I would look at closely is all the electrical connections from the stator to the R/R and battery.  Make sure sure you are not seeing any signs of corrosion at these.  My brother went through two stators on his Ninja 650 and on the last one found the connector from the stator to the r/r melted.  He eliminated that connector by solder splicing the wires together and has been good for the last three years.  If he needs to disconnect either end he will just cut the wires and re-splice/solder as needed.

That is a really good point about the connectors.  I went with a Mosfet R/R on my DL650 after the stator failed; removed the connectors and soldered the wires.  One thing to note about a solder splice is for a good connection the wires should be twisted tightly together before soldering.  I like to use safety wire on the splice as extra insurance of a mechanically solid connection.  At the time, for the V-Strom, a Mosfet R/R was the "hot" setup, but now more and more are going to a series R/R.  I went to a series R/R on my '95 FXDWG (Harley Wide Glide) when that stator failed and never had another issue.  I'm seriously considering a preemptive strike and replacing the R/R on the WRR with a Compu-Fire Series R/R.

UPDATE:
Guess what I got in the mail this week? The long version of this recall:



2015 YAMAHA WR250R MOTORCYCLE RECALL - #15V410000
RECALL FOR ELECTRICAL SYSTEM : ALTERNATOR/GENERATOR/REGULATOR

Yamaha Motor Corporation, USA (Yamaha) is recalling certain model year 2008-2011 WR250X motorcycles manufactured June 1, 2008, to June 1, 2011 and 2008-2015 WR250R motorcycles manufactured June 1, 2008, to June 1, 2015. In the affected motorcycles, the insulation on the stator coil, a component of the alternator, may become damaged and short circuit to due insufficient heat resistance.

Just had my Stator recall done. Only took about an hour and they had 15 more ready to get there fix.

I called Yamaha Customer Relations and they are telling me I have to take the bike to a dealer for them to consider any reimursement. I don't see what good that's going to do since the stator has already been replaced. Tha closest Yamaha dealer is 230 miles. In 40 years of owning various cars, trucks, and motorcycles I have never taken anything to a dealer, and I don't intend to start now. Looks like I need to write a letter to Yamaha...

I wrote a letter to Yamaha Customer Relations explaining my situation. Yesterday there was a phone message from a rep saying she wanted to talk with me concerning the "financial assistance". I called back, hopeful that I would get a reimbursement. I was told that I would need to send a copy of the receipt for the new stator to my nearest dealer, which seemed reasonable to me. The rep then asked me to hold for a minute, and then came back to say that I would indeed have to take the bike to a dealer to verify that the stator was actually replaced. I guess they think I fabricated the whole story. I am very disappointed with Yamaha customer service.

Seems fair to me, it seems like they're not obligated to give you the money back.

You also need a receipt and the item,and go back to the store when you need to return some of your groceries...

Jens, I just found your stator replacement post in the original recall thread which I had not seen until now. Did a dealer give you the stator?

A friend of mine works at a dealer, so they let me change it myself. Win-win for both the dealer and I.

I took mine in this morning. Dropped it off, went for a coffee, came back 45 minutes later and it was sitting out in the parking lot waiting for me! Old stator looked fine. 27000 miles, lots of hard hot running on freeways and desert. Slightly discolored or stained, but nothing out of the ordinary. I would have preferred a fuel pump recall!

I had already replaced a stator befor the recall too. However, I don't consider that I need reimbursement for that, since the latest upgrade is clearly a different part in appearance from the old one. Also, that second stator was on the verge of failing - black, burnt.

Realistically, a recall repair is a stand-alone job. What has gone before the factory can't help imo. At least there is a recall...

As for that bloody fuel pump, well, a weak effort at best!

grw800 wrote:

... and then came back to say that I would indeed have to take the bike to a dealer to verify that the stator was actually replaced. I guess they think I fabricated the whole story. I am very disappointed with Yamaha customer service.

This chaps my friggin ass  
They want you to drive 460 miles to prove what can be documented electronically?
Show them the date on your receipt. Should be a done deal, unless they think you are actually starting a stator collection
This was a safety recall, not a cosmetic defect. You essentially went to bat for them, and are entitled to reimbursement.
Do they think your documented online saga WHICH PREDATES the recall, was actually a psychic prophesy? Perhaps they would reconsider if you directed them to your posts which also pre-date the recall, with over 1,000 views and counting. Post links in other forums. Call a spade a spade. They implied you could be fibbing. Pretty safe bet this was one of, if not the only significant failure you have chronicled on your WR... unless you have claimed OTHER things failed as random stabs in the dark in a whimsical attempt to defraud Yamaha Corp...