New Rocket 3

[Rocket Scientist]

I looked in the service manual. No real troubleshooting guide for the charging system. Other manuals I've had will give you the resistance values between each leg of the alternator. This one doesn't. The R3 uses a permanent magnet alternator. The regulator tries to maintain the system voltage at somewhere around 14 volts. The rest of the energy is burned off as heat, hence the cooling fins on the regulator. I've attached a picture of the electrical system from the manual. You can get a PDF copy of the manual by going to any posting by "IDK67". I would start by unplugging the wires from the regulator and measuring the resistance between the three that go to the alternator. (Make sure battery is unhooked). I don't know what the resistance should be, but they should all be very close to one another. Check the value between each of the three wires. Then check each individual wire to ground. You should not measure much of anything to ground, maybe a few meg-ohms. When you are doing the test to ground, don't touch the wires or test probes with you hands as the resistance in your body will skew your readings. You said the auto technician installed a bigger 35 amp regulator/rectifier ? Usually these are matched to the alternator/vehicle so I would be wary of running an "off the shelf" unit. I would get the correct one back on there. It's possible you have a bad cell in your battery. The regulator will work it's arse off trying to charge it. You can get new batteries with a bad cell sometimes. Also look all the wires over that are involved with the regulator to make sure they aren't pinched, chafed etc. Also compare your fuse sizes to the manual and make sure someone didn't up size one of them because something is drawing excessive current. Let us know what you find.

 

[ksquared]

I've been under the weather for a few days so " Welcome to the forum from Sunny South Florida Hope you'll enjoy the time you spend with us here.

 

[TOMCAT]

G'day Adam. I've found OLIVERS Triumph at Moorooka very good, they have a mechanic who really knows Rockets. Fred at PRO TUNE at Underwood is the go-to guy for tuning Rockets. He's a top bloke and also knows and loves Rockets. Realise it's a bit of a ride down the range but worth it in my (and a lot of other Brissy Owners opinion) .. hope to see you at RDU Victoria

 

[Adam79]

Tomcat, thank you very much for that info, not far to brissy from here. plus any excuse to get on it I rekon, I'm going to buy a ramair combo thing or maybe design my own version have seen some real nice pics of a few peoples concepts that I love, just need to make an over flow bottle up, when I have all that on I will visit the tuner guy and get them to tune it just rite.......

 

[Adam79]

Whats is the RDU in victoria, sounds like a nice ride..