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Small Engine Charging Problems


cruizin01

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I have a 23hp Kawasaki on my Zero turn thats not charging.

 

It has a fairly simple charging system with a stator and a 3 wire regulator/rectifier. 2 wires go from the stator to the rectifier and 1 wire out from the rectifier through the harness to the battery for charging.

 

So the spec says that if you have AC voltage of 27-30 volts at full throttle between the 2 wires coming from the stator that the stator is working correctly.

 

The rectifier should convert the AC voltage to DC voltage to get you the ~13-15 volts you need to charge the battery.

 

So I am getting 28v from the stator but nothing from the output on the rectifier. So I assumed the rectifier is bad so I order another one from Kawasaki. New one doesn't do anything different.

 

I jump the rectifier battery voltage out tab to the battery to make sure its nothing in the harness, fuse etc but nothing changes.

 

I verified the rectifier is grounded. no change.

 

I did swap to a spare battery incase my battery had a short causing havic with the recitifier and nothing changes.

 

Im usually pretty good with this stuff but I can't figure it out.

 

Any thoughts?

 

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Remove the battery and check for DC voltage from the battery tab to ground. If it's putting out 13-15V then one of a few things could be happening. Your stator may be able to put out voltage provided there's no load, but once the battery starts drawing current then the voltage collapses. Or, you have a bad connection from either the regulator to the battery, or the battery negative to ground.

 

Quick edit: Does your meter have a diode checker? The rectifier should just be a 4 diode bridge.

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Do these have any kind of fuse associated inline with the system?

 

There are some fuses that I checked. Im not certain what is what.. but, I bypassed everything in the harness by jumping from the rectifier directly to the battery.

 

Remove the battery and check for DC voltage from the battery tab to ground. If it's putting out 13-15V then one of a few things could be happening. Your stator may be able to put out voltage provided there's no load, but once the battery starts drawing current then the voltage collapses. Or, you have a bad connection from either the regulator to the battery, or the battery negative to ground.

 

Quick edit: Does your meter have a diode checker? The rectifier should just be a 4 diode bridge.

 

Ill look into this again but Im pretty sure I checked that. I pulled the output wire off the rectifier and tested for voltage and there's nothing there. Thats doing the same thing as what you said right? But I read that the rectifier has to see load for it to work correctly. So I may not be able to test for what you are saying.

 

I double checked the ground wire from the battery to the engine. I added a ground jumper from the rectifier to the ground post. nothing changed there either.

 

mmm. I dunno about the diode checker. I have a medium range fluke. Ill take a look at it. I assume though that if my old one and my new oem one do the same thing its not likely the rectifier, even though I would love for it to be. As its the only thing that makes sense to me.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just an update for anyone that cares.

 

I had a friend over and we went over everything again and kept coming back to the rectifier. So I hopped on amazon and bought a $13 3 wire rectifier for a different engine. (The Kawasaki one was $50)

 

Wired it up and started the mower, whataya know? 13.5 volts!

 

Relieved and aggravated at the same time.

 

Ill return the $50 one and just keep the cheap one.

 

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

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