Alotta Volts

[czakky]

The other night riding home from work(rarely do I ride at night) I noticed my dash lights are all super bright. When I get home I touched the regulator noticed it was warm but not too hot, a couple days go by and while I'm strapping on my lid while the bike is idling cold I reach down and check the reg. It's way too hot for a bike that just started. Again a few more days go by and me not being the type who jumps right into something, I put my multimeter on the battery terminals and see at idle i'm getting 13.03 volts but at 4k rpm it jumps to over 17v!

 

I am about to check into the easy stuff first but my fuses are all good. I do have the extra ground strap on my reg. and all my connections are full of vaseline and wrapped in tape.

 

Initial reactions? Is my OEM Ducati part dead?

[Lucky Phil]

Looks that way. Ducati 1098 regs in the early days were rubbish and cooking batteries everywhere.

Something about them changing the supplier of regs. Effected other models as well from memory.

Ciao

[Admin Jaap]

Had the same problem a little while back. Replaced the regulator and problem was gone. I found out because it fried my battery....

[czakky]

Seems like guys had issues with Rick's and the Electrosport (sic?)....Any recommendations?

[czakky]

ESR it is.

[docc]

Post back how that works out. I forget the relative merits (and drawbacks and costs) of the various options. Every time I try to wrap my brain around it, a diode fries in my frontal lobe . . .

[czakky]

Haha Docc! Browsing through old threads about the subject kinda cleared up some of the confusion mostly thanks to Kiwi_Roy's electrical know how. But still mostly in the dark on how some lose voltage and some (like mine) gain...?

 

Also Roy, I did read your post this morning about the ESR510, Thanks Buddy!

 

Hopefully this might clear up the non-problem of my absent gen. light on start-up.

[Admin Jaap]

I use the ESR510 now and it works like a charm. However, the voltage at 5000 rpm isn't as high as with the OEM regulator. It's plug and play and I like that :-)

[czakky]

Guess I ordered the esr515. A horse a piece the way I see it.

 

Charging is higher at idle (than a fuctioning stocker) around 13.4v but lower at revs, around 14.3. I'm happy thus far, hope I'm good for another 35k miles. Bonus, my battery light now lights on start up!

[Kiwi_Roy]

The ESR510 is connected directly to the battery eliminating some problems

 

The ESR515 is  a direct replacement for the OEM Ducati Energia so it may suffer some of the same problems.

As long as you have a standard headlight arrangement it should be ok

 If you add headlight relays you may find you lose some battery Voltage.

 

I tried to get Electrosport to divulge how their regulator works but they are pretty cagey