do reg/rectifiers do get hot in use?

[callyboy]

quite a few peeps seem to mount them under seats in a tray nowadays. They dont seem to have many problems, although some kind of air flow would be nice eh? maybe rig up a bit of ducting?

Pete

[Nigelkat]

Had mine fitted underseat on a tray for 6+ years now no problems.

It is an Electrex one though not an original and I`ve mounted it on raised bolts not flush to the tray to help with cooling.

As Pete said plenty of people have done this and I`ve not heard of any probs.

If you are concerned with heat you could always mount it on the underside of the tray.

[Uncle Bob]

As it's an alloy tray get some thermal paste (as used on CPUs in a computer) and use the alloy tray as a large heatsink!

[Soichiro]

Otherwise known as heatsink compound. Available from Maplin, RS etc.

[johnr]

katanamangler has a 12v computer panel fan bolted to his to air cool it! but wherever the reg rec is, make sure it gets earthed properly right back to the battery because poor earthing makes them work harder and when they work hard, they get hot.

[sparki]

an absolute must is avoid the bar switch like you say. worst idea ever that was...

[Soichiro]

Why's that then? Is it too much power going through the switch contacts. My GS850 was wired the same and that didn't suffer at all.

[johnr]

the idea was to route 2 phases to the reg rec and thus to the battery, then wire the third phase to the reg rec vis the light switch so that when you put the lights on the battery got more power. sounds great in theory, except that the reg rec struggled with the imbalance of 2 phases running flat out and one not being able to get rid of its power because it was switched off. couple this with low oil levels making engines run slightly hotter, but hot enough to overheat the windings of the generator. always a bad idea and they started to fail almost from new. best thing to do is what everyone else does, put all 3 phases through the reg rec and let that sort out charging the battery and dumping the excess charge by means of creating heat. its a pointless exercise. and they dont suffer from having the 3 phases run direct to the reg rec.

[Soichiro]

I got the 'switch in an extra phase to power the lights' idea but I didn't realise it had an adverse effect. In that case, a bit of rewiring is called for.