My electical system is giving me fits. Finally determined that one of the issue is that somewhere I'm leaking positive to ground. Long story short, I believe it may be the voltage regulator. Pulled it out, and while it's not melted, I've got current flow from positive to negative leads. When I check resistance, I show around 4 ohms between pos and ground.

Seems to me that there should be NO flow between pos and neg here. If I'm wrong, it means I need to keep digging for the short on the stator side of the regulator. If I'm right, well, I think I still have other issues, but at least I'm one down.

So, before i spring for a regulator, Should there be current flow between pos and neg on one?

Thanks.

 

If there is resistance, that it is not a short, that being said, I don't know which wires you're testing nore do I know the correct specs for the voltage. What's the problem that you are experiencing thats leading you to check the regulator?

 

My problem is as follows. Let my dad use the quad this summer (I really just use it for plowing snow) and he had trouble getting/keeping the battery charged- had to pull start it. He was using it with an electric spreader.
So I get ready to plow snow, no big deal to pull start it, but the winch won't work. Not at all. Battery has a strong charge. Starter won't turn either.

Attach only leads to winch, still no winch.

Pull off leads to winch, still no starting. Check voltage at battery and see that when switches are on, voltage drops to about 6 volts. This lead me to believe I had a short somewhere. I disconnected the negative cable, and when I touch the red lead of my multi meter to ground and the black to the negative terminal, I get show current of about 4-5 volts. This says to me I've got a short somewhere.

I started tracing the elecrical and discovered that I don't get the current leak if only the coil lead is hooked up. If the hot lead from battery to regulator is hooked up, then I have the problem. Disconnecting the regulator stops the "leak" so I checked the reg for flow and found that there was only partial resistance between the brown and red wires, which didn't make sense to me. That's what prompted my question- should current flow between the hot and ground wires on a regulator?

Could all this be due to a bad battery? It's only a year old, and holds 12 volts fine, but perhaps it's not putting out suitable amperage? But that doesn't explain the presence of positive current in the ground.

Any thoughts will be appreciated. I'm pretty puzzled.

 

Hello SteelersFan. To measure the leakage current from the battery, you must have your VOM set to current, not volts. Also make sure the leads are connected to the current (AMPs) connections on the VOM. Disconnect one wire of the battery and connect the meter between the battery and the wire. I would suggest that you should measure no more that about 10 mill-amps. Unless you know the proper resistance measurent of the regulator, you cannot say that 4 ohms is bad because you are mesuring the resistance of a (probably) transistor. One way of measuring it may result in high resistance; however, by swapping the leads you may find it is low resistance. Let me know what your current reading is.
Bryce