Aprilia RSV 1000 R Factory Stator Charging System Repair Hack Recall

[@Swisherhouse480]

Dude thank you for making this dumby proof, I’ve been having issue after issue and your video explained it perfectly and she’s running like a champ 🎉🎉🎉

[@luckyluca1979]

The brown connector melts because the charging system produces too much current that the regulator rectifier can't cope with. This fix will still burn out the stator, the permanent solution is a upgraded flywheel which is de-rated and produces less current and doesn't damage the charging system.

[@ProjectsMB]

First let me say thank you for commenting Luca. I think people might not be grasping the entire problem. Basically, the battery is just a storage device to start the engine and is not designed to run the vehicle at all; that is the job of the alternator (stator & rotor). That is why if you jump start a "modern" engine with a dead battery the electrical system will still operate even with that dead battery. Obviously we agree that this charging system was a poor design and a failure. I believe in this modification because it corrects the original charging system's inability to correctly monitor the battery's state of charge. In it original form the rectifier/regulator's battery state of charge circuit "is seeing" lower battery voltage than the system actually has. This causes the rectifier/regulator to continually deliver a higher output than the vehicle actually requires to operate. That overheats the brass connectors inside the brown connectors, which in turn, heat cycles the brass, which then "relaxes" and creates an even larger resistance causing the system to produce even more current (heat) ultimately melting the weak link, the connector. What the additional positive and negative wires, connected directly from the battery to the rectifier/regulator, do is to provide more accurate battery state of charge data to the rectifier/regulator. Operating the electrical system within the system's original design parameters has hopefully cured any need to for the regulator side to produce any excess voltage. I will post a follow up if this hack fails to provide the expected results.

[@luckyluca1979]

@@ProjectsMB the reason why the rectifier gets hot is not because is pumping too much electricity to the battery but because the rectifier stops too much electricity to go to the battery and it does that by turning the current into heat, therefore working as heatsink, when there's too much current that it cannot longer turn into heat, the brown connector gets too hot and it melts.

[@ProjectsMB]

@@luckyluca1979I think we'll just disagree for now because neither of us knows the actual algorithm the processor is using to determine its rate of charge. My interpretation is: it is common to switch the stator voltage on and off; "duty cycling" the output to control the wattage. The system only needs to produce the energy necessary to run the bike once the battery is charged. If the battery is at a full state of charge it makes no sense for the wiring to be overloaded or the stator and rotor to be producing high output. The stator in an IC system, in theory, does not put out a constant 500 Watts and then the ic uses what is needed in the system and then heat sinks off the remainder. If that were the case the bike would have an unnecessarily high parasitic loss to drive an electric device. That makes no sense in a high performance application where the intent is maximum hp. We might also be misunderstanding one another in reference to the rectifier/regulator; they are not designed to be heat sinks to absorb excess wattage like a carbon pile. They are finned to dissipate the heat of the control unit's circuits alone. Again though, if this hack fails I'll post the result; so far though the system operates constantly at 13.8 - 14.2 volts and there is no excessive heat when holding the stator wiring in your hand.

[@cherrybopbop]

The flywheel on the pre 2007 models run 500w which is too high and needs to be 380w. It burns out the stator themselves. Ticking time bomb. It will self destruct in time unless the flywheel is swapped for the latest model one or machine (lathed) to produce the reduced power it should have been designed to produce.

[@ProjectsMB]

Thanks for watching and taking the time to post a response, it's appreciated. I'd like to state that even though a charging system has the potential to overcharge a system, when asked to do so, that doesn't mean it charges at it's full capacity all of the time. Most every charging system on the road today has the potential to burn itself up if run at full load but the system voltage reference sensing circuit of the regulator is tasked with managing that task. In the case of these Aprilias the sensing circuit providing data to the regulator does not provide the actual system's circuit value to the regulator and therefore the regulator believes it has to charge at a higher rate than is actually required. This in turn burns the electrolyte out of the battery and that then creates even more heat leading to the melted down. Control the voltage accurately and there is no need to replace the stator or rotor. I will update this post with a failure if that occurs sometime but so far the issue is remedied with this hack.

[@Sid3Shift]

Hi, thanks for the video. Can u share a link with those pages to print out as well ?

[@troyrumsey511]

I want to know how your journey went with the swingarm. I have an 04 as well and AF1 told me their is nothing that can be done at this point. I just did do the series R/R mod with the ricks stator, prior to the mod I was getting 11.8 at idle and 12.5 at 3k, now I am at 13.4 and 14.5. Bike is happier for sure!

[@ProjectsMB]

My swingarm recall isn't going as planned. When my vin was run in the Piaggio data base it says the swingarm had already been replaced in 2006 under recall. The service guy at the Aprilia dealer I took the bike to agreed that it hasn't been changed on this bike, but unfortunately nothing he could do since it is recorded as being done. I tried buying the arm outright, it isn't available. The service guy took some pictures of this bike and is working on a solution through a Piaggio rep. Stay tuned

[@joaoferreira88]

@@ProjectsMB Dealer in portugal recently replaced my swinarm, which was also marked as "replaced" under the warranty.

[@ProjectsMB]

@João Ismael Ferreira that is good to hear. I went into my local dealer who reviewed the service records for this bike and Aprilia says I'd had already been done, but it hasn't. Service manager told me to gring the bike in and they will turn in this swing arm for the new revised model.

[@alexbianco9893]

ciao, grazie per il bellissimo video spieghi tutto molto bene, spero di risolvere il problema alla mia moto , non ci crederai ma l'ho portata a ben due officine autorizzate aprilia ,ho speso solo soldi senza risolvere il problema hanno cambiato statore ecc ecc ,tecnicamente mi hanno solo fregato soldi. un forte abbraccio e grazie milleeeeeee. Alex

[@anonymous-tn6ij]

So I’m not sure why you would bother piggybacking the old wire with the nice new wire why wouldn’t you just run the nice new wire and not splice them in together and also if you’re running the wire to eliminate the connector if you think the connector may be an issue maybe you could put some dialectic grease in it to promote a better connection with the ground wire if you need a better or heavier ground just eliminate the smaller gauge wire no need to splice wires together like a piggyback besides when you do that if one wire is shorter than the other, when you piggyback that means pulses can go a different speeds and then you could have aecho affect just like if you did this with the speaker so you would have heavier wiring by adding more wires you would add interference, but if the issue is with the amount of current, you should be changing the Statter itself or flywheel or source coil to something more stable

[@ProjectsMB]

Let's cover the connector first, it's a shade type, and that type of connector isn't best known for it's ability to carry larger current loads (their basically 2 flat pieces of brass sitting on top of one another) and once the resistance at the connection builds the spade begins to loose it's "spring" memory and thus the connection becomes lesser and the heat continues to rise as the resistance becomes greater leading to the failed connectors. Since the part isn't a regularly serviced component eliminating the connector removes the possibility of a failure location. We piggyback at the connectors, not after, and you'll notice the ground circuit now runs directly to the battery. It does not do that in the OEM configuration. The ground lead for the ecu runs to frame if memory services me right and that is not actual battery voltage. That is this systems biggest failure. The system is charging the battery to a false reading so we are now feeding the ecu the actual battery voltage we'd like to maintain. I am probably somewhere around a year since this modification and have experienced no indications that a failure is forthcoming. I can't remember why I piggybacked the battery charge circuit; probably because it's a 30 amp fuse from the OEM and I couldn't see how the stock wire could maintain a 30 amp load.... I do agree with using dialectic grease on connections but it doesn't necessarily create a better connection per se since it's an insulator and not a conductor. DG is great at keep contaminants out of the joint and maintaining the integrity of the connection, but this is a heat related issue. The heat weakens the tensile of the brass connectors, and then they begins to loose connection, increasing resistance. Thanks for your thoughts and taking the time to write

[@3FHVSP]

The solution is half good because it is not very good to connect only one jumper wire because it will disturb the current sharing on the same connector wires. The solution for the stator connectors and the stator itself is to replace the regulator with a series type of regulation.

[@ProjectsMB]

@3FHVSP this hack was done over 3 years ago now, the bike has not had any issues since. A hack by nature is a workaround, and this one does seem to be effective. One can always take their bike in for a dealer repair but if that isn't an option this appears to be an alternate solution.

[@3FHVSP]

@@ProjectsMB, I made a similar plan for the Kawasaki ZX600F3: regulator-rectifier.sper. hr /Quick_solution_of_low_battery_voltage.pdf

[@3FHVSP]

@@ProjectsMB, I made a similar plan for the Kawasaki ZX600F3. You can find it in the description of my channel, 3rd link title: "Solution of low accu voltage".

[@3FHVSP]

@@ProjectsMB, I made a similar plan for the Kawasaki ZX600F3. Ch.dsc. Solution of low accu voltage

[@ginolevino]

Not RSV4, and we can't see anything in your video

[@ProjectsMB]

@ginolevino how do you know it is not an RSV4 if you can't see anything? You are correct, I miss spoke the bike is an RSV 1000 Factory. Since the clip was shot from my phone, and the video title is correct, I didn't think it was necessary to correct that part of the audio.

[@Errol.C-nz]

Your buddies rsv4 !..