After a night's sleep... the name I was trying to remember: Russ Phelon. He had a small company that developed aftermarket ignitions for racing outboards. He invented the combination stator/regulator/rectifier arrangement that Mercury, and later, most motorcycle manufacturers adopted.
You're probably correct. There's not 'rule' of man or physics that demands the PMG have any number of 'phases', but the more phases, and the more bridge rectifier elements, the lower the resulting AC Ripple becomes (because one phase dropping off is being 'filled in' by the next one picking up. In the CL125, as with most motorcycles under 350cc or so, the stators are wound to be able to generate JUST ENOUGH power to keep the headlight, taillight, and ignition going, and not charge the battery more than an ampere or two.
By the way, the Selenium Rectifier, if still present, is a problem. Selenium rectifiers are the bridge between VACUUM rectifiers, and Silicon rectifiers. They were first made in 1933... and became pretty much standard for 'medium load' rectification until eclipsed by the silicon rectifier. Selenium rectifiers were much smaller, simpler, and tougher than a vacuum tube rectifier system, but they were not as 'fast' in switching AC... they have a higher 'forward voltage' than a vacuum tube rectifier, so they're a bit lossy (and in radio receivers, a bit noisy), but the bad part, is that, regardless of wether you use them or not, they degrade chemically inside, and eventually, they fail... and when they do, they can short internally OR open circuit.
SO... if yours HAD (or HAS) a selenium rectifier... you may have some stator coil damage.
Yeah... thats not right. it should provide whatever output the coils generate UP TO the rect/reg's setpoint, at which it should limit voltage at that point. The proper charge voltage for a 6v lead-acid battery should be around 7.3v... 7.7 would be a bit on the high side of charging, but not out of reach... but 10v tells me that either the reg isn't clamping, or theres some sort of resistance in the reg/rect's return (ground) connection. A 'floating' ground results in lack of proper voltage reference, because voltage drop over that resistance causes a rise in reference voltage, like biasing a transistor, or resistance in the cathode of a plate-modulated tube amp causing forward bias.
Here's a great example- Every once'na a while, I'll build a regulated supply that needs say... 1 amp at 13.2v. Instead of using an LM317, some zener diodes, resistors, and capacitors, and an output transistor, I'll just use a 7812 3-pin regulator chip, and instead of tying the ground leg straight to ground, I'll put TWO diodes (1n4001s) in series from that pin, to ground... and with 0.6v drop across each silicon, that 'floats' the 7812's voltage reference up by 1.2v, yielding... 13.2v.
This is actually exactly what I did in my CX500's temp gauge 8V regulator... I used an LM7805, and floated it up to 8v with 5 diodes in series.
My gut here, is that your DC-DC is not 'starting up' until after it gets substantially above some threshold... and that it may be consuming about as much power as waste... as it is putting out. I say this, because the SMPSs that drive the LED systems in my overhead signs do just that (they don't kick on 'till a certain level) and they're power-hungry pigs... for a 35w LED array, they take in almost 60w! If you put your SMPS on a bench, and turn a bench supply on to 7.7, does it kick on? If so, how much current surge does it draw on initial 'charge up'? They're capacitive input, that's why wall-warts 'pop' every time you plug 'em into the wall now (and also the reason why they fry at the least suggestion of lightning).
Dirty secret, by the way... if you apply AC to the input of most DC-DC converters... they'll still 'work', because the FIRST thing that happens to incoming AC power, is that it goes through a full wave bridge, to charge the input capacitors... but they're NOISY... so if you use a DC-DC in say... a radio or telecom circuit, it barfs hash-noise BACKWARDS (right through the bridge rectifier and caps) into the power supply of whatever you're using it IN... and it generates all sorts of ugly interference in the radio/telecom circuit...
You're probably correct. There's not 'rule' of man or physics that demands the PMG have any number of 'phases', but the more phases, and the more bridge rectifier elements, the lower the resulting AC Ripple becomes (because one phase dropping off is being 'filled in' by the next one picking up. In the CL125, as with most motorcycles under 350cc or so, the stators are wound to be able to generate JUST ENOUGH power to keep the headlight, taillight, and ignition going, and not charge the battery more than an ampere or two.
By the way, the Selenium Rectifier, if still present, is a problem. Selenium rectifiers are the bridge between VACUUM rectifiers, and Silicon rectifiers. They were first made in 1933... and became pretty much standard for 'medium load' rectification until eclipsed by the silicon rectifier. Selenium rectifiers were much smaller, simpler, and tougher than a vacuum tube rectifier system, but they were not as 'fast' in switching AC... they have a higher 'forward voltage' than a vacuum tube rectifier, so they're a bit lossy (and in radio receivers, a bit noisy), but the bad part, is that, regardless of wether you use them or not, they degrade chemically inside, and eventually, they fail... and when they do, they can short internally OR open circuit.
SO... if yours HAD (or HAS) a selenium rectifier... you may have some stator coil damage.
Yeah... thats not right. it should provide whatever output the coils generate UP TO the rect/reg's setpoint, at which it should limit voltage at that point. The proper charge voltage for a 6v lead-acid battery should be around 7.3v... 7.7 would be a bit on the high side of charging, but not out of reach... but 10v tells me that either the reg isn't clamping, or theres some sort of resistance in the reg/rect's return (ground) connection. A 'floating' ground results in lack of proper voltage reference, because voltage drop over that resistance causes a rise in reference voltage, like biasing a transistor, or resistance in the cathode of a plate-modulated tube amp causing forward bias.
Here's a great example- Every once'na a while, I'll build a regulated supply that needs say... 1 amp at 13.2v. Instead of using an LM317, some zener diodes, resistors, and capacitors, and an output transistor, I'll just use a 7812 3-pin regulator chip, and instead of tying the ground leg straight to ground, I'll put TWO diodes (1n4001s) in series from that pin, to ground... and with 0.6v drop across each silicon, that 'floats' the 7812's voltage reference up by 1.2v, yielding... 13.2v.
This is actually exactly what I did in my CX500's temp gauge 8V regulator... I used an LM7805, and floated it up to 8v with 5 diodes in series.
My gut here, is that your DC-DC is not 'starting up' until after it gets substantially above some threshold... and that it may be consuming about as much power as waste... as it is putting out. I say this, because the SMPSs that drive the LED systems in my overhead signs do just that (they don't kick on 'till a certain level) and they're power-hungry pigs... for a 35w LED array, they take in almost 60w! If you put your SMPS on a bench, and turn a bench supply on to 7.7, does it kick on? If so, how much current surge does it draw on initial 'charge up'? They're capacitive input, that's why wall-warts 'pop' every time you plug 'em into the wall now (and also the reason why they fry at the least suggestion of lightning).
Dirty secret, by the way... if you apply AC to the input of most DC-DC converters... they'll still 'work', because the FIRST thing that happens to incoming AC power, is that it goes through a full wave bridge, to charge the input capacitors... but they're NOISY... so if you use a DC-DC in say... a radio or telecom circuit, it barfs hash-noise BACKWARDS (right through the bridge rectifier and caps) into the power supply of whatever you're using it IN... and it generates all sorts of ugly interference in the radio/telecom circuit...
