Flyinfool

Your close. The stator is a variable voltage variable frequency power source that has both voltage and frequency determined by the rpm of the engine. The Stator is always at it maximum potential. In a stock Venture, first or second gen there is a shunt type regulator. The way that the regulator works is kind of like what you said. The difference being that electricity is not pushed it is drawn. So with the stock regulator when the voltage exceeds it set point (14 volts in this case) it makes a connection to ground and that ground connection will draw as many amps as necessary until the stator can no longer hold the voltage. Whenever you exceed the amp capability of a power source, its voltage will drop proportionally. In this case the voltage drops to ~14VDC on the output. In a stock system; You are correct that the stator is always doing all that it can. It is correct that the regulator is dumping off all of the extra power to ground. Where the difference is, is when the battery is drained way down, and the engine RPM are up, the bike electrical system plus the draw of the battery can exceed the total available output of the stator. In this case the regulator is dumping nothing to ground because the bike plus battery is using it all up, the problem is that if the bike plus battery are asking for more amps than the stator has to give, its voltage will drop. It is this extreme amp load that will cause the windings of the stator to get hot and degrade the insulation on those windings. The stator may not fail right away but you have overheated it and weakened the insulation and you will thus have shortened its life. The stator will fail sooner than if you had never used it at or over its max amp output capability while charging a dead battery. When jump starting, the reason you do not want the car running, and some people get away with having the car running is that the regulator on the bike is going to try to dump as much power to ground as it needs to, to try to maintain its set voltage. IF the cars voltage regulator is set higher than the bikes regulator, the bikes regulator is going to try to pull enough amps to drop the car down to the bikes set point. My car has a 200 amp alternator. The regulator on the bike is rated for around 40 amps. All of the magic blue smoke will come out of the bikes regulator before it can pull down the voltage on my car. If the cars set point happens to be the same or lower than the bikes set point, then there will be no issues with jumping from that car while it is running. This explains why some people have had no problem jumping from a running car. Others got away with it because the two were close enough and were connected for a very short time so things did not have time to overheat. It is just safest to not have the car running to avoid the possibility. You notice that many times I mentioned a stock system, there are after market rectifiers/regulators for our bikes that do not shunt the power to ground and have a completely different way of doing everything. But that is almost a whole nuther post. My fingers are tired now.....

When the bike is cold, start the engine and monitor the temps of the exhaust pipes to see if it is running on 4 cylinders. Be careful it only takes a short time for the pipes to get hot enough to burn you. These bike run amazingly well on 3 cylinders.

each coil will fire once every 360 degrees, or once per revolution.

Then your not getting enough remedy, or getting ice cream to close to home.

sorry...... For my punishment you will have to force me to eat ice creammmmm...........

Whats a suit and tie??? I never had a ring horror story, But then I was religious about not where the ring around mechanical or electrical stuff. I was one of the lucky ones, I figured it out without bad things happening to me or someone else. I do wear a watch, but with a cheap easy to break plastic band, I have had to replace the band at least a half dozen times now.......

I guess I'm chopped liver............ I was working in the basement till 4:30 am this morning. At least I got a lot done. But now I might be to tired to do anything about it. How come 30 years ago I could do these all-nighters and still feel and function fine the next day?????? I hope to be on for a bit tonight, at least until I fall asleep, IF I'm not still chopped liver.......

First I hope you meant volts not amps...... At what RPM are you getting the 13.9 volt reading? How must stuff is turned on while getting the 13.9 volt reading? 13.9 volts is not a bad reading, and is within the normal tolerance. Many meters, especially inexpensive ones, are not accurate enough to measure the difference between 13.9 and 14 Volts.

I hate to be the one to tell you. But you have an incurable disease. Once infected by this bunch there is no cure or escape. The only remedy for the symptoms is repeated MC rides to the farthest away ice cream stand. Preferably with another infected person or 4. This is not a cure, but it does relieve the symptoms foe a short while.

Hehe Thats kind of what I said or at least meant, but I needed a lot more words....... Maybe I've been reading to many of Cowpucs posts......

Isn't that the motto of the Chicago Cubs and Minnesota Vikings????

With your eyes closed......

To be fair it is theoretically possible to devise such an electronic contraption. It would have to connect up to all 4 sync ports and by monitoring the vacuum/pressure pulses you could determine the total duration that the valve is open. As the valve train wears on these engines the clearance gets smaller which would cause the duration to get longer. The same would hold true on the exhaust side. They would need to connect up to each of the 4 exhaust pipes (is there even a port existing to do this?) to monitor the pressure pulses to determine the exact moment that the valves open or close. Since we have 4 valves per cylinder, there are 2 intake valves opening and closing at the same time, one of these could be out but be masked by the other one that is not out, because something opened and closed at the right time. Again same holds true for the exhaust. The difficulty would be to be able to detect that very first moment when the valve just barely starts to open by monitoring a pressure change that is some distance from the valve. When that valve is just opening by less than a thousandth of an inch, is there even a measurable change in pressure several inches from that valve where the monitor would be hooked up? I can see with modern electronics and computers that the system could detect valves that are way out of whack, but I strongly doubt that it is possible to detect valves that are only slightly out of spec either high or low.

On their website it states that the fuel savings are only due to putting in a higher temp switch for the radiator fan so that the fan is drawing power less often. Our cooling fans never run at speed so there would be zero savings on MPG. Diesel trucks on the other hand spend a lot of time idling and running the fan.

The cam chains are between the cylinders so it would not be heard on one side over the other. You have something else rattling. If you had it lugged down far enough it might have been the gears bouncing around making noise. Just another WAG.

My vote is you need to find a new dealer.

Like that even could ever happen.......

So around $426 to put it in my truck!!!! It better be better than good stuff. The stuff in there now is already good.

And a fine grocery list it was. We will be well fed.

Just how expensive is it? They are real careful to not mention price on their website even with the bright red "Order Here" tab, which only tells me that there is not a dealer within 300 miles of me. And how much is the conversion fluid that you have to run thru first?

So Condor is Mr Twinkie......

There is good news and bad news here. The good news is that you have all but eliminated carb issues as the culprit. The bad news is that it is an intermittent electrical issue. The worst thing to find. There are a lot of electrical things that can cause your symptoms. The big clue here is that the tach drops to zero when the engine stumbles. This means that there is no longer a signal being sent to the #2 coil. If it was just the #2 cylinder dropping out you would hardly notice it at all in the running. This means that you have multiple cylinders dropping at the same time. As Frank mentioned the cruise is a indicator of power to the ignition. If the "ON" light flickers dims or goes out while the engine is stumbling then you know that that circuit is the problem. I would start by checking all of the power and grounds to the ignition system and clean the kill switch. They are the easiest things to do.

I love finding those in the woods when the deer flies are buzzing around my head. I just hold my head close to the web and give ol spidy a treat.

Never say never.......

The best parties are always in the ladies room....... Next time pop in and see whats popin.