GS450 odd charging issue

[Westboundbiker]

Hey ya'll,

Pulled the bike into the shop friday night, and low and behold, the low beam was popped. Having bought the whole headlight package at a swap meet, I wasn't sure what the previous life of the whole thing had been, so I didn't know if it had just the 400 miles I'd put in since spring, or 4000 from the old owner, I decided I'd just go pick up a new bulb. Popped it in on saturday, and went for a Sunday ride. I pull her out this morning and go to hop on to head to work... and boom, the low beam is out again. I tilt the sucker down, and ride in on high beam. I get her home tonight, and start picking at the electrical. Fucker is putting out 18 V DC at a couple thousand RPM! And that's with the high beam on. So I disconnect the regulator (a CB750, in place of the crumby, failure prone stock one), and hook up... the stock one, which was working in the fall when I put the bike up. Same problem! So I skim (I'm currently re-reading them in detail!) The Stator Papers over on the GS Resources, and follow the checks of the alternator; all alternator/stator leads are .8 ohms, so they're ok, and all the diode checks come back ok.

So, what am I missing? What could cause me to be so far over voltage?

Here's how I've got it wired.



Table of multimeter readings:
--------------------------------------------Other lead on:
Readings on R/R:-----------Stator wire 1-------Stator wire 2-------Stator wire 3
Red lead on + output:--------0---------------------0------------------------0
Red lead on - output:---------492-----------------499----------------------512
black lead on + output:------510------------------478----------------------514
black lead on - output:--------0---------------------0------------------------0

Which would lead me to believe that it's ok...
According to the holy 'Stator papers' on the GS resources, this points to a battery flaw. Would a battery issue cause this?

[Sky]

Bad ground(s)
Voltage regulators shunt extra voltage to ground and/or bleed off as heat.
Light bulbs get extra hot if the resistance is raised via a partial ground path.
Extra resistance from bad ground at the batt and/or bad cell(s) in the batt will make that reg work pretty hard too

[Westboundbiker]

Alright, I'll check all that tonight.

One question on that, why would the bulbs get hotter if there was a partial ground? Wouldn't that act as additional resistance, meaning less voltage drop and less current flow across the bulb?

[Sky]

Theoretically, that sounds correct. I never actually measured the temperature of the bulbs, got me there.
I just know from simple observation That bulbs with poor grounds burn out faster.
And I have seen tailamps, and markers, with poor grounds with melted acrylic lenses. Once repaired, the replacement lenses didn't melt. So I drew a conclusion…

[Westboundbiker]

For those who find this thread in the future, I wish I could give you more information than this... I just pulled everything apart, checked some wires, ran an extra ground cable (even though my multimeter only showed .3 ohms from the case of the R/R to the battery ground beforehand)... and it started working fine. So... friggen gremlins.