Burnt-out connector

As usual, click any image to zoom in.

Last night, Mark rode the bike to the Antrobus Arms for the Thursday night meet-up. It was charging perfectly but he complained of a slight misfire when the revs began to build in each gear. Changing up a gear lowered the revs and the engine reverted to running smoothly.

On the way back, the ammeter showed a discharge even on sidelights and would occasionally go wild for a second or two.

I took the saddle off this morning to be greeted by a roasted connector on the Bridge Rectifier.  Now that all the earths have been sorted the full 8 to 10 Amps of alternator current is testing any poor connections.  Well, it found one. Last night before setting off the connector looked mint but obviously the spade type connector was corroded, hence destructive heat was generated, thereby destroying the connector.

I cleaned the rectifier terminal, cut off fried connector and temporarily connected lead from alternator to rectifier. Voila! Charging again.

I read something very interesting last night from one of BSA's Service Sheet where it states that "if running the bike in Emergency Mode for too long the battery will charge to a point that the bike will MISFIRE!" What I am saying is that battery conditions affect the timing to the extent that misfiring occurs with resulting poor performance.