wannabe
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Posts: 1931
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posted August 05, 2006 09:35 PM
 Edited By: wannabe on 5 Aug 2006 22:36
Old news but new again to me - 2001 stator recall
Hey Kids,
Long time no post. I just thought I'd share my fun. I went out riding with a buddy. The weather was absolutely perfect in the morning. And, apparently, everyone decided to sleep in so the roads were totally empty. We had fun for about half an hour before we both needed to drain our main veins. We pulled off the side of the road to empty ourselves, and when we went to start off again, my bike wouldn't start at all. My battery was freakin' dead!
WTF?!! I always baby my battery and keep my bike connected to the battery tender when she's in my garage. So, I knew it couldn't have been my battery. I remember the last time my battery died, it turned out to be related to that recall where the oil wicked up the stator wire. The dealer fixed the recall and replaced the voltage regulatore just in case. (That was two years ago.)
So, lucky for me, I decide to pee at the top of a hill. I told my buddy that I was heading home. He took off without me, and I turned the bike around and bump started the bike down the hill. I got her home and took the tail section off. Guess what I found....
  
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wannabe
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Posts: 1931
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posted August 05, 2006 09:38 PM
Yup, you guessed it. The original recall fix didn't hold. The oil still managed to make it through the stuff they used to seal the cable. The oil also managed to burn up the connector.
I spoke to the dealer, and they said that they would take care of it gratis. (I would hope so.) Hopefully, Kawasaki decided to give me a new stator & cable assembly instead of just telling them to sqirt some sealant goop into the cable.
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Ozzy
Needs a job
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posted August 06, 2006 05:47 AM
I have a couple of thoughts about these failures. Dont know if I am right or wrong, but they seem logical to me.
A power transformer for a utility company uses oil as a coolant, so why would oil make the connector overheat? The stator sets in oil, the staro end of those same wires that failed are in oil, yet the failures occur at the plug, none have been reported at the stator end of the same lead.
Heat in an electrical circuit is due to high resistance. ie. How an electric element in an oven works.
The 2 connectors I have seen that have failed both show heat as the culprit, not chemical deterioration.
My $.02 on this failure is that the connectors in the plug do not provide a low resistance pathway, hence excessive heat is generated, causing the wire to fail. (Heat is generated at the connector, and the wire being a smaller conductor than the connector tends to act as a fusible link)
Kawi came out with the contact cleaner / cyanoacrylate glue fix as a way to address the migration of oil up the stator lead. The connector sets near the rear tire and I believe their only concern was the liability connected with oiling down a rear tire.
2 things need correcting , the oil migration ( for safety) and the connector.
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Wideout
Expert Class
Posts: 300
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posted August 06, 2006 07:22 AM
One Kawa dealer told me they were required to replace it with the old stator harness once (like yours), then if it failed again....they were allowed to put on the '04+.
I took it someplace else and had it replaced with '04+ straight away. Ask your dealer to call Kawasaki and discuss it with them.
quote:
The connector sets near the rear tire and I believe their only concern was the liability connected with oiling down a rear tire.
My opinion is that they know about the burned up stator issue, but use the oil as more of liability reasoning. If your dealer has not ran into multiple instances where it burns up, then they really only know about the tire reasoning given by Kawi.
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wannabe
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Posts: 1931
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posted August 06, 2006 09:24 AM
quote:
One Kawa dealer told me they were required to replace it with the old stator harness once (like yours), then if it failed again....they were allowed to put on the '04+.
I took it someplace else and had it replaced with '04+ straight away. Ask your dealer to call Kawasaki and discuss it with them.
Thanks for the heads up. I am already in discussions with my dealer on this very issue. He told me that he would be trying to convince Kawasaki to replace the stator with an later model one.
I'll let you know more after I drop my bike off on Monday.
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wannabe
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Posts: 1931
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posted August 11, 2006 09:15 PM
OK, here's a quick update. I just got a call from the dealer. They are telling me that the problem is not being covered under the auspices of the stator recall. Lucky for me, I bought the extended warranty in a moment of weakness when I bought the bike. They said that the warranty covers the fix. That works for me, but I totally would have been pissed if I didn't buy the warranty.
Now, I just have to cross my fingers and hope that the parts come in soon so that I can get ready for Bonneville.
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Wideout
Expert Class
Posts: 300
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posted August 12, 2006 09:48 AM
Good deal.
Funny how inconsistent they are. Mine wasn't even covered under the base warranty and they replaced it for free. Total recall...
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wannabe
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Posts: 1931
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posted August 12, 2006 02:16 PM
Yeah, it's kinda sad. The dealer that I bough the bike from sells Kawi, Suzuki, and Yamaha bikes. The service guys weren't all that sure that they could convince Kawi to pay for the work. They just kept telling me over and over again that the Kawi warranty support was the worst of the three. They said that the Yamaha support was by far the best.
I guess I never noticed until now.
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vozizm
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posted August 12, 2006 06:15 PM
good info here ---> http://zx-12r.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=44568
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wannabe
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Posts: 1931
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posted August 12, 2006 06:29 PM
quote:
good info here ---> http://zx-12r.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=44568
Good info, Voz. Thanks for the link.
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Ozzy
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Posts: 3172
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posted August 15, 2006 06:45 AM
Just what I said in my above post. We did that same fix to Dinos 12R 3 summers ago before heading to Laguna.
The oil is not the electrical problem, the heat from the poor connection is the problem . The oil is only a safety issue.
Just think about it, if the oil was the issue, why doesnt the wire first burn up at the stator end where the oil always is?
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