So i got the quad running, Had to take it to a local bike shop to get carb adjusted. It is running sweet, How ever battery is loosing volts. From what i have read it could be the stator or the regulator. I have read the sticky above how to test stator, But can't understand it . Also will need to test regulator. I have bought myself a multimeter to test. Battery is new and been fully charged. I have some readings.
Battery fully charged 12.92v
Ign on 11.88v
Ran for 10 mins 12.89v then slowly started dropping.
Tested battery the next day and is showing 12.04v.

I was told when the quad is idling it drains the battery, you need to be running it to charge it, over 2000 rpm, Even though i was keeping the revs high it was not charging, Still dropping.

 

Refresh my memory. What quad model is this? What engine size?

Find your voltage regulator. How many pins? What are the wire colors? If your regulator uses pigtail wires between the regulator body and a connector that feeds the wiring harness, please report the wiring harness side colors for each connector pin. The pigtail wire colors are meaningless. If you don't have pigtail wires (your regulator plugs directly into the wiring harness) then you have no choice but to report the wiring harness colors...

What I'm trying to do is determine what style stator you have. After that is determined we can see if the voltage regulator is getting the proper input voltage.

In the meantime charge your battery back up. Batteries that sit around discharged are quickly ruined.

 

Its a Loncin, 50cc, think it its year 2000. The regulator has 4 pins, colours white/red/green/yellow.I think it just plugs straight in to the harness. Harness colours are white/yellow/blackred/bluewhite

 

Unplug the regulator.

1) Measure the resistance from the yellow and white wires in the harness at the regulator connector to ground (the green wire). What do you measure?

2) Switch to measuring AC volts on the 50 volt scale. Leave the regulator unplugged. Start up the quad. At idle measure the AC voltage from the:

A) Yellow wire to the White wire.
B) Yellow wire to the ground (green wire).
C) White wire to ground (green wire).

What do you see for these three voltage measurements?

What you are doing is furthur defining your regulator type, and measuring the output voltage of the stator. The battery charging system is pretty simple - the stator puts out AC voltage as the engine is turning. The voltage varies proportional to engine speed. The regulator rectifies this AC voltage to DC, then regulates it to 13.5 to 14.5 volts DC. That's all the is required to charge up a lead-acid battery such as the one in your quad. The measurements above will help isolate whether the problem is before the regulator input, or after...

 

I may have your answer to this one (possibly). I have 2 unknown Chinese 50cc quads. I noticed too that after the kids rode a while, the batteries would die on both of them (both had brand new batteries). That was leaving the keys turned on while they rode. After some digging around, I for whatever reason, decided to try something else. So, here's what I've done and never had the problem again on either of the 50cc quads.

Turn the key on
start the quad
turn the key off

Does the quad stay running until you hit the kill switch?

If so, then that is it. After I started both quads, I would turn the key off and let them ride for hours. Turning them off for breaks, then riding some more.....I have never had a problem with either quad killing the battery again. I know this sounds absurd, but it is what it is. Now, I have a larger 125cc and 250cc Chinese quads that turning off the key, turns off the engine....why the 50cc ones work this way is beyond me, but if both are doing the same thing, I figure why mess with it. The kill switched kill teh motors, so just something to get used to for us.

Let us know how it goes.....there may very well be something off with both of my 50cc quads, but I'm good with them the way they are.

 

Thanks, I'll test that tonight. What do i set the multimeter to measure the resistance? Will the quad run with the regulator unpluged? Also i forgot to mention that when the quad was running the outer casing for the stator was so hot you couldn't touch it, It's strange because the guy at the bike shop said it wasnt normal for them to get so hot, but dident say anything more.

 

Im sure when i turn the key off it cuts the engine.

 

Look for a setting that says "ohms" or shows the greek letter omega (which is used as a symbol for ohms). You can google "omega" - or just remember that it looks sort of like an upside down horse shoe. There will be many resistance scales. Use something like 20 ohms full scale. Note that KOhms and MOhms means Kilo and Mega Ohms. Don't use those scales for this measurement. 20 KOhms is 20,000 ohms. 20 MOhms is 20,000,000 ohms.

To verify that you really are on a resistance scale short the two lead together. The reading should drop to zero ohms. When you disconnect the two leads from each other the reading will go to infinite ohms (oftern the display will just like up the left most "1", or display the text "ol" (open loop)).

Some fancy meters are autoranging - they have just one resistance scale, and internal circuitry automatically sets the best scale for you. In this case a display icon will be lit telling you if the display is in ohms, KOhms, or MOhms.

The quad will run fine with the regulator unplugged.

Stators should not run that hot. You could have a bad stator (internal short) that would cause this, or your rectifier diodes inside the voltage regulator are shorted - allowing the battery to drain backwards through the shorted regulator and through the stator. In this case the stator will get hot and drain the battery very quickly. The ohms and voltage tests in my last post will help figure out whether your stator is bad or your regulator is bad.

 

Most chinese quads have a two section ignition switch. One section is shorted when the ignition switch is on. This applies 12 volt power to the starting circuitry, lights, etc. The other section in the switch is shorted together when the ignition switch is turned off. This section shorts the kill switch pin at the CDI to ground - killing the engine when the switch is turned off.

Raenglehart, you apparently don't have this ignition switch setup on your two quads. Your description of having to turn off the ignition switch to keep the battery from discharging doesn't sound all that unusual to me. Almost certainly your voltage regulator has shorted rectifier diodes in them. This discharges the battery through the bad regulator and through the stator charge windings very quickly.

Lets say your fully charged 5 amp-hour battery goes flat in 1 hour while riding. To do that the quad has to be sucking 5 amps of current out of the battery (five amps times 1 hour is 5 amp-hours...). That's a lot of current. 5 amps times 12 volts = 60 watts. Thats a lot of power (heat). The only things that could dissipate that much heat without smoking are the headlights and the stator. If the headlights being on were the cause I'm sure you would have figured that out by now. The stator is very big and massively heat sunk to the engine block, so it can shed that much heat without smoking - but it will get pretty warm over 15 minutes or so.

Instead of turning your ignition switch off, next time just try unplugging the regulator. If the quad runs without draining the battery then your regulator(s) are certainly bad.

 

Alright Lynn, Got some readings, For the Resistance i used the lowest setting which is 200, hope this is correct.

Yellow and white wie to ground were both 1.0

For the AC, The multimeter only has 600 and 200 so did it at 200 setting

Yellow wire to the White wire 2.8v
Yellow wire to the ground 8.2v
White wire to ground 10.1v

Hope i did this correct.