So recently picked up a 99 pairie. Looked good, tires good ran good etc etc. All the normal stuff i thought i needed to check. Got it home rode it and she will get. But my battery died after a few days. So i thought the problem was my voltage regulator....replaced it and no change. So i read somewhere that says the plugs sometime go bad on the voltage regulator so i got rid of it. Still no change. I have tested the ac voltage coming out of the stator and it shows voltage coming out and goes up when i give it gas to raise the rpms. Not sure if the voltage coming from stator is enough but it does go up. I feel there is something drawing amps while the engine is running. It also runs pretty damn hot...not sure why. Any help with the matter would be greatly appreciated!!!

 

The first thing to do if your battery is going flat is to charge it up, start engine, put a voltmeter across the battery and see what volts you get, should be circa 12.7v to 14.5v and alter with revs. Switch off and the voltage should instantly drop. If it doesn't, and the voltmeter reading never got over 13v you have a faulty voltage reg, a faulty stator, or the voltage reg isn't getting the signal from the battery to work properly. Can be a dud battery, easily checked, by a battery tester, or the wires from battery to voltage reg having a high resistance due to a broken or corroded wire, I test for power at the regulator by putting a high wattage 12v test lamp between the pos and neg wires at the regulator loom plug, a good bright light, indicates the power from the battery is getting through. Some Kawasakis have two pos wires to regulator, one live all the time, one only when ignition is on. If you have two (a brown and a grey, I think) check them both.

 

Ok so ive started up the quad and have checked at the battery, running it never gets above 12.6 i replaced tbe voltage regulator and at the plug that runs to the battery im getting 12.5ish volts. I did a good test on the stator yesterday and at idle she is showing about 8v ac up to around 20v when revved up. The voltage does go up just not sure if it is enough. The engine is also getting rather hot on this thing while im testing. Previous owner claims to have put a new carb on and has purchased a battery a few months ago. Sticker on battery shows 2/20. I put my battery tender on the battery to keep it charged between testing. Im suspecting its a bad stator but i dont wanna drop alot more money in this thing if that doesnt fix my issue.

 

Do resistance tests on the stator, not sure if the Prairie is a two or three wire stator machine. If three wire, check all three wires for resistance, should be the same when you put an ohmmeter between any two wires, within about 5 ohms. Then test between earth and these wires, should be open circuit. Do the test already mentioned for battery power at the regulator plug, double check you got the pin out right for that plug. Usually with a faulty stator, the regulator doesn't get hot when running, if the regulator or wires from battery are faulty, the reg gets quite hot. When testing, your engine will get quite hot as there is no air flow over it, don't run it for more than a few min. Do not assume your new reg is a good one, we have been getting lots of faulty, non genuine regs lately, though admittedly, they have all worked for a few weeks after being fitted.

 

I tested my other quads stator because i know the stator is good on it. Test came back way different, running at idle it was 25v up to 80+vac with higher rpms. The prairie is only showing 8vac when idle up to 25. So im going to order the stator and hope that corrects the problem