bad battery?

Good you have found the fault. As long as the laquered copper wires are ok, then you should be able to sleeve the affected area. Don't use tape, as the glue will come off. i would use either some rubber sleeving or heat shrink sleeving - use (Carefully!) a domestic heat gun - like you strip paint with.

You cannot separate the internal stator wires as they should be laquered together. The winding ends should have a few ohms between them and you might be lucky - check your manual for the exact reading you should have. This depends how accurate your meter is.

If the reading really is zero, the stator has failed but you would probably be able to smell a catastrophic failure, so you could take a chance and try it now.

It might help if you could post a pic so we can see exactly where the alternator is damaged.

Good luck!
Mark

 

ok - i apologize - all i have is a cell phone with a less than awesome camera, but here is what's going on:



i circled the damaged insulation on the wire coming off the stator, and drew an arrow to the hole in the grommet that the wire was supposed to go through.

can i just slide that stator right out of there? or is there more involved to getting it out? repairing the damage might require making more room to work, ya know?

 

I can't really see the damage and I only have a manual for my 600 (But they should be very similar. Haynes says "Remove alternator cover, brush assembley and remove stator.." which makes me think it will slide out. try moving it carefully. It will be tight as the air gap (Between stator and rotor) is kept small for efficency reasons.

There should be 3 wires coming off the alternator but don't try pulling them apart if they are lacqured together.

My manual spec is for 0.5 ohms white wire to white wire and 3 ohms on the green and brown field coil so your stator could be ok.

If the wire will be enclosed by the rubber grommet when it is reassembled it shouldn't short out (if you cannot get anything on it).

 

Why would you want to do that?

 

good news - i pulled the starter (to give me some room to work) got the wires back in the grommet where they're supposed to be. put it back together and she started right up. i'm now getting ~12.5 V at idle and ~14 V at ~3,000 RPMs.

thanks much for all the input everyone.