Starter Clutch?

OK I saw you description. Its not the starter clutch. A starter clutch can bind, but that will carry the starter with it, as in ... you'll hear the srarter run along with the motor. Very bad. You will also have a starter clutch go bad where it gets a bit of flat spotting on its rollers. You hit the start button and it makes a metallic clack before starting. That means you need to change the thing pronto (or if its starting to make a habit of it) cos the thing will actually transmit enough vibrations to start to shatter that magnet (aka alternator rotor) ... you can shatter it and end up with metallic pieces in your oil - I mean tons of metallic pieces in the oil. In the GS500 world we call that Goats syndrome after the first guy that caught it. His handle was goat. In quick succession like a month 4 more of us had got it including me and one guy got it twice but his was a crash that bent the case just enough to be undetected when you aren't looking for it but yet managed to eat the rotor by making the stator hit the rotor.
Cool.
Srinath.

 

A generator does not make any AC, it can't. Here is a great tutorial, Google Alternator and check out the link to misterfixit.com. Very informative in laymans language. Hope this helps.

 

Robert - that mrfixit is about alternator. Its says nothing about generator. To go from AC to DC we need a diode which will remove the negative cycle and then there needs to be a capacitor which will remove the pulses and smooth out the wave. A coil in a rotating magnetic field can only make AC. To make DC using the same method you'll need to have a straight line moving one direction through a magnetic field. AKA an air plane flying in most directions except due north-south will make a DC voltage between its wing extremities.
Cool.
Srinath.

 

About a generator -

http://www.rowand.net/Shop/Tech/Alterna ... Theory.htm

And scroll down for alternator.

Cool.
Srinath.

 

With you on the link I gave you, it does mention what a generator does but does not go into specific details since it is primarily concerned with the more common alternator. I appreciate your efforts and link, I'm sure it will answer a lot of questions folks out there might have. True that the generator does create AC internal to the windings it cannot, however, produce AC as the brushes are only conducting the voltage during the time that the waveform is in the correct polarity. This does leave a very slight ripple but the RMS is sufficent for use on the vehicle. Clipper (or clamping) diodes are key to the rectification process for the alternator and smoothing it all out with a cap is very important too. Most manufacturers still have a minor amount of ripple on the DC line but it is small enought on our units that it causes no problems (our systems are rather robust by comparison and much simpler too). Newer vehicles, which run on these very particular electronics, need much cleaner DC so newer systems are by far more sophisticated than their predicessors. Good discussion Srinath, this is excellent information.

 

Right. There is a 100 ways to say the same thing. They make AC internally, but externally and all the wiring in our bikes - its all DC.
Cool.
Srinath.