Rectifier Regulators?

[pete376403]

If I owned a motorcycle & found it used an abortion of a charge regulating system like this I would
a. be very worried about what else was designed in to the bike
b. get rid of it as fast as possible

PS: The circuit looks like it would toast regulators & stator windings. What did you say had gone wrong!
If you made the whole charging system a bit more robust, I am sure you could get the bike to run hotter, use extra fuel & produce less output power too!

That was how it was done back in the day - the page is from a site dedicated to late 70s and up GS Suzukis, so chances are kawasaki Z1s of the same era used something similar.

GS Suzukis were renowned for having the Jap equivalent of Joe (Prince of darkness) Lucas electrics

It would be nice to think that 40 years of electronic progress have resulted in something better.

[sootie]

That was how it was done back in the day - the page is from a site dedicated to late 70s and up GS Suzukis, so chances are kawasaki Z1s of the same era used something similar.

I don't know about the Z1, but I owned a 1979 KZ400. Everyone warned me that it was a very "economy version" bike put out by Kawasaki, and "dumped" on the NZ market. I was a bit wary of buying it. However it used a proper field controlled 3 phase alternator; the lights had no on/off switch, and you just could not flatten the battery in Ak traffic with any reasonable use that I tried over many years.

My previous bike was a Honda CB360 of about the same year. It used a single phase field controlled alternator which was inadequate. In the end I modified the electrical system with a separate rectifier to drive the lights. This worked fine, but guess which design impressed me more?

You are quite correct about charging systems of the era being crude. The trouble is many of them still are! (including the Italian electronics on my 2009 Piaggio Fly scooter). It really is not rocket science, and the electrical charging system seems like a good way to judge whether a bike manufacturer is focussing on getting the price down by providing crude engineering where most buyers will not pick it up.
(My theory is that the savings are then spent on adverising assuming similar bikes tend to retail at fairly similar prices!)

Incidently, the old OMC outboards (1960 - 70s) had incredibly crude charging systems which sometimes
resulted in burn out of the early CD ignition modules they used. A simple shunt regulator set around 14.1V could save the day here, but another story I guess.

[pritch]

Having just recently developed an interest in such matters I came across this:
http://www.triumphrat.net/speed-trip...r-upgrade.html