Hi all. As promised in my intro - a bit of feedback on building my own regulator rectifier. I used a few electronic components and built a RR for about a 10th of the price of a new one in South-Africa. (R240 v.s. just over R2400 for a new one.)
It seems to be working fine. I've tested it for about 300km's so far, and although it gets a bit hot (Which it should) everything seems fine. The voltage is a bit on the low side but varies with the load. Starts at 14,7V and drops to a steady 13,7V as the battery approaches the 13V state. (Part of the design using a 13V zener diode for the reference) For the electronic guys: I used 3 thyristors (SCR's), a 13v Zener diode, a few resistors and capacitors for the regulator. I built a seperate 3 phase rectifier using 3 fullwave rectifiers connecting the 3 stator outputs to the ac connections.
The rectifiers and scr's are all rated at over 35A continious, so if all goes well, I hope to see some good life out of the components. Sorry for the long post, but that's about it....

wow, I'm an old Navy ET and I can really appreciate what your onto. Did you use the original printed circuit board and just clean it up and put new components on or did you pre fab a new board? the 13v zener is brilliant. sound like you've built this the way it should have been from the factory in the first place. Let's just keep an eye on the heat dissipation and see how she holds up. I'm thinking there may be a possibility that it might run a tad hot (voltage) but you probably thought of that while you were building it. Do you have any pictures? .... You might want to market this thing. Just thinking.
Let us now how it performs.
smurf

Hi Smurf.
The original circuit was cast in some sort of epoxy which was difficult to loosen, so I just cleaned everything out and used the housing for my own circuit. In principle I used the SCR's with the gates referencing to the zener diode and the moment the SCR's switch they pull the Stator output down to earth (Which is where the heat comes from) This is momentarily though, because with each of the 3 cycles it checks the voltage again and if it is below 13,5 v it passes the current through to the battery for charging.
If I remember my theory correctly (correct me if i'm wrong) it is better for a stator (armature) to be under load than to be in an open circuit condition. The open circuit induces a lot of heat in the armature which may lead to insulator breakdown.
I will try and take some pictures and post it later in the week. Does not look that good from the outside though 'cause I used a glue gun to seal the RR.

That's great work. I love the home engineered stuff, you don't have to compromise on component quality as they do with mass produced items. Keep us up to date with how it goes

Sounds good to me. I haven't had a problem with my R&R yet. I did get a spare off of ebay just in case. I need to hook it up to see if it is any good.

Herman, to be honest with you, I'd have to research this whole thing. It has been a while since I've been into the electronic theory. Somewhere I turned into a router / switch engineer and have gotten rusty on the electronics. Just brought back memories of days gone by. I always appreciate design and ingenuity though, you've got me motivated to do a little investigating in alternator / regulator design. A good example of the talent on this board. I commend you on your forethought. In short what you've done is pretty "kicka**".
smurf

Absolutly.....good one bro, keep up the good work.



Lois

Thanks all. Will keep you up to date. Seems to me that there are quite a number of other makes also suffering from this...

Good on ya Herman! Got to agree w/ Lois. Looks like you've a knack for detail. Hope it works out for ya! Looks promising!

I was browsing around on the web regarding R/R and stator issues and ended up on an R6 forum site. Some of those guys were focusing on the wiring from the stator to the R/R. Solutions that were discussed: 1) Increasing the size of the wires and relocating the R/R to the underside of the battery box (somewhere with better air-flow). 2) Increasing the size of the wires and keeping the same location for the R/R.

One guy picked up a truck to trailor wiring harness kit, cut off the supplied connectors and used the guts for a new stator to R/R connection. All posted positive feedback with this change.

Any thoughts on this? Could it be that the wires are more of (or at least as much of) the problem with over-heating as the R/R itself?

Nope. The problem is the heat generated by the SCR's in the regulator section. The only way to prevent premature failure is to keep them from overheating the rest of the components. The later models with the large heat sink fins seem to be standing up much better.