[mattsthru]

It has been my understanding that the sole purpose of the battery was to "start" your vehicle not run it. Shouldn't my bike run fine without a battery as long as it gets a jump first. I'm asking because my battery is dead so I've been jumping it with my car battery and when I disconnect the jumpers my bike seems to be starving for electricity. It will idle but it wont rev just sort of bog around a bit when I give it throttle. This leads me to believe that both the stator and r/r still work to some extent. If I leave the battery connected it runs like a champ and screams when I hit the throttle (in neutral) but as soon as I disconnect it it turns into an old beater. Some clues I've seen were burnt wires going to the r/r and the blinkers make a wining noise when engaged. I think it's the r/r because the wires shorted before passing through. ANY IDEAS?

[monkey]

Sounds to me like your r/r went out and has subsequently taken out both your stator and your battery. The burnt wires are not a good sign. That sounds like a lot of voltage was being shunted off before it ever made it to the rectifier, and possibly a lot of voltage being sent back to the stator. That's what would burn that out. You need a battery installed to help complete the circuit. When you jump it, you're using the car battery in place of your own. No battery...no workie.

Go to electrex.com and download their fault finding chart. It's a good way to start checking things before you start replacing them. Do you have a voltmeter? You'll need one. To run most tests, you will need a fully charged battery, so that might be your first replacement item. Check voltages into and out of the r/r, check resisitance of the stator coils, check charging voltage while the bike runs, etc, etc. It's all on the chart.

Good luck!

[lanbrown]

At idle a motorcycle does not produce enough electrical power. This is why the lights get brighter when you rev the motor. Most of the time the motorcycle is not at idle and at higher revs it is producing a lot of electrical power. This is not a car where it will rev less than 3,000 RPM most of the time. Most of the time a motorcycle is above 3,000 RPM. Some racers run without a battery but they also don't have all the lights either.

[gearhead14]

Running without a battery is not a good idea, the charging system needs a load such as the battery to smooth the delivery of electricity to the bike. Any load, even a bad battery is better than none, you risk burning up components such as your computer or rectifier without the battery in the system.