What did I do wrong?

[RJag2]

I have finished painting and assembling the bike finally, however when I got to where I was hooking up the battery I had a bad experience.

I had replaced the rectifier with the radio shack version from Bill Silver's page and run the bike before disassembly, so I know it worked...

However when I hooked up my battery after putting everthing together I had the rectifier cook off, the wire from the battery to the rectifier melted off it's insulation and it took me a minute to get the battery unhooked again.

As I understand, the + terminal of the rectifier is always hooked up to the battery. As is the negative terminal, (to ground) while the other two wires that hook up to it are the AC out wires from the magneto.

If this is the case I don't see what would have caused this rectifier to burn up...

Any Ideas anyone?

[joeweir1]

sounds like + and minus wires from battery were reversed. I pulled a bonehead move one time using a battery sitting on the ground and using jumpers. I was not paying attention after trying to start bike and when I put leads back on to battery I reversed them and the rectifier got real hot and started melting the rubber insulation on it.Do you have a fuse in the bike.Just make sure your hot wire's are not touching ground anywhere.

[joeweir1]

just a refresher-DC + is pink, yellow and brown are the AC terminals.

[RJag2]

I did have a fuse, however the wiring harness only has a fuse between the positive branch that leads to the keyswitch. There is no fuse between the rectifier and battery.

Thanks for the idea, I will check out what I did closer to see what happened.

Thanks