Another fun one. 16V at the battery seems like a bad thing. But how?
First suspect is the regulator. Getting it out is possible without pulling the ZX11 alternator (let's not talk about putting it back in just yet). Test it on the bench, switching voltage seems to be about 14.5V; maybe a bit higher than I'd like, but within reason.
Check the resistance from the battery to the alternator sense terminal with the engine off, doesn't seem too bad. Fire up the engine, sense terminal is ~0.2V below battery. That's ... ok. Rev the engine a bit, up go the volts. That's not ok. Easy to get nearly a volt drop from battery to sense terminal just by blipping the throttle.
Pull the supply lead off the dash breaker, drop in the trusty 10A meter. Fuel pump is 1.3A, idle is about 4A, blip of the throttle and we're over 10A. Easy to see how we're losing a volt there.
Moral of the story might be: ignition and fuel pump relays are a necessity if you don't want to boil your battery.
I blame Lucas.
Wow, did you figure out how to fix it or are you still investigating?
Charley
Wow, did you figure out how to fix it or are you still investigating?
Charley
I'm tossing up between just merging the two alternator wires to make it a single-wire setup, or running the sense wire directly from the master switch to hide the drop across the alternator fuse and relay.
Merging is the simplest approach, and I haven't come up with a reason not to do it yet. Even with the fuse and relay in circuit, the battery should see a bit over 14V at idle, which would be fine.
I ended up mixing the two; ran the sense wire back to the alternator cutoff relay, since I'm fairly confident of the wiring from that point onward. 14.5V solid at the battery, regardless of engine speed.
