So I'm useing a one year old lead acid vented motorcycle battery and my wife and I are out on a ride. After supper when we left the restaurant after I started my bike, a Bassa, the charge light stayed on and the voltmeter did not rise from 12.6 or so. I shut off all lights, I have a switch that I can do that with, for just this reason. We blasted for home about sixty miles away, I ran around 80 mph due to the sun going down, she hung back and got home soon after me. The volts had dropped to 11 and it was starting to miss a little. I put a ten amp charger on in anticipation of troubleshooting. I went to read over it and the chargers internal protection clicked off. I put a smaller charger on and it took that fIne so at 12.5 volts I put a carbon pile battery tester on it and it failed the load test. Same thing next morning so I ordered a new Odyssey that showed up yesterday. After installing it the charge light stayed on at idle but went out at higher revs but the volts did not rise so I better order a regulator if I want to ride it this coming weekend. After I got one on the way, Euromoto electrics , I figured I should do some basic troubleshooting. I pulled the regulator off to visually check the wireing and found the two yellow stator wires melted at the connections, a place I've had problems with before. I repaired that and was surprised that it works, those must be some good stators to survive that sort of abuse. I'll have a new regulator on the shelf so I'll probly never need one. I think the battery put a higher load on the alternator than normal and caused the connectors to heat and fail. Nothing unusual on the voltmeter alerted me to the impending doom, but it was something I could have fixed if I was out on a trip.
