The most expensive way to troubleshoot an electrical issue is with your wallet...

Get out your voltmeter.

Let us know when you are ready to actually troubleshoot.

 

Ain't that the truth.

 

While your problem isn't with the voltage regulator, I just thought I would share a little info on them in case you run into charging issues in the future, which most of us do at some point. Voltage regulators and stators are usually replaced together. Because a problem with one can sometimes cause the other to go bad. So what ends up happening in many cases where only one is replaced is they just keep going back and forth ruining each other. A bit of a pain & cost to replace both, but it evades this nightmare that many of us have gone through. Best of luck & ride safe.

 

Not sure if you have corrected your issue yet but thought I would mention a couple things you might want to consider. First is that you stated it is a 'custom' chopper - meaning it most likely does not have standard factory wiring and/or a schematic diagram available. There's always the possibility that it may not have been wired correctly from the gate. Not trying to say anything bad about the builder, just that I have seen those sorts of issues many times on custom stuff. Was it working properly and then failed or was it not working correctly when you got the bike and now you are trying to fix it? Just something to think about & hopefully lead you to the problem.

 

Not in my experience! But that is why we encourage members to diagnose the problem, for which we have Stickies over in the Tech Electrical section. The only failed regulator I've had in over 40 years of riding Harleys came several years after the stator went out. In fact those are my only failures and were on the same bike.

 

I was only referring to my own personal experience, that of several of my friends, and a handful of shops over the years where we have all had the exact same issues. Glad to hear you have had good luck with them though, it's a real pain & cost. The theories I have heard behind the cause is either a change in impedance in a faulty regulator creating an excessive current draw thus letting the smoke out of the stator assembly, or a fault in the stator resulting in an output voltage beyond the parameters that a regulator can take. But I understand your response - I have heard guys tell me about crazy sounding issues that didn't really seem possible to me, yet over time I hear enough having similar experiences that proves they're definitely dealing with odd issues. Electrical stuff can be difficult to troubleshoot/advise on without actually being able to put your own hands on the bike, simply because some of the readings/symptoms that get relayed may or may not be exactly accurate. Either way, it always feels good when you can help someone out & get their stuff fixed correctly. Ride safe out there