Originally Posted by dszrew

The battery in my meter went dead, so I decided not to trust the earlier readings.
After replacing the battery, I only had about 11.6 volts at the ATV battery, but it has also been run a bit without getting recharged, so I think it's losing the charge it originally had.
Then I started the ATV and connected the voltage regulator, still only getting 11+ volts while running.
So now I'm waiting for a battery charger to arrive to restart the process as well as the service manual. I'm betting it's the voltage regulator, but I won't know for sure until I get everything I need to do the testing right.
Perhaps if the voltage regulator is going bad, it might have put out too much voltage at one time, that's why someone had disconnected it. I suppose if it's bad it might also give inconsistent performance--sometimes putting out too much, sometimes not putting out anything at all. Hopefully this week I'll be able to do some better testing.

Originally Posted by dszrew

I ordered a good battery charger, changed the battery in my voltmeter, purchased a voltmeter capable of reading A/C, and got the service manual in. Here's where I'm at:
[*]Battery charger indicates the battery is very good and holds a charge.[*]Voltage regulator failed all tests (resistance, voltage). When taking the voltage regulator off, I could see it was definitely blown on the back. [*]Ordered a new voltage regulator and connected it. [*]With the new voltage regulator, I'm getting 14.4 volts while running, so it looks like I'm getting the right voltage back to the battery to charge it.[*]The stator passes all resistance tests.[*]HOWEVER, I'm getting over 100 volts at high RPM from the stator. I don't have a tachometer so I can't tell if I'm at 5000 RPM, but it's very quick to exceed the 60 volts. I'm betting that under 5000 RPM I'm getting 80 volts or so. Either that or my voltmeter isn't giving me the right numbers, but it should...

The manual doesn't say anything about too much voltage out of the stator, but I'm wondering if this led to the original regulator failure.

The wires coming out the stator seem good, so I guess I could run it a while and see if the regulator blows again, or tear into the stator???