Why do racers seem to have a bad stator longer than trail riders and don’t know it? The answer is actually pretty simple. The rest of us are trail riding our sleds so of course we are continually riding them for extended periods of time allowing the stator to warm up to full temp. So if it is getting to full temp it is also flexing/moving more because of the constant warm up/cool down of the stator components. This is why trail riders see the issues….when they stop for 5 minutes along the trail the sled is hard to start, it back fires, won’t start for 10-15 minutes…all that electrical byproduct of having a dying stator. Straight line racers on the other hand are only starting up their sleds and warming them up for a few minutes, put them on the starting line and holding it wide open for 5 to 10 seconds. They go back to the pits and their sled cools off before their next run. This allows the stator to cool off also and the components to “tighten” back up. There are lots of ways for the stator to die but most of the time it has to do with internal shorting out and when cooled off it allows the wire to “shrink” back into a position where it will make contact or at least be able to find the path it was using when shorting out completing the electrical path. It doesn’t mean it is the right path…but electricity will take the shortest path possible and that is what it will follow. That is why racers don’t usually experience the sled not starting….they usually just experience smaller/less obvious issues like it not revving up consistently, jetting is all over the place/they are jetted much leaner than normal because of weak spark, maybe a slight miss from time to time, occasional hard starting…but most of the time unless the stator is totally dead racers can “limp” a bad stator along for years blaming their issues on other causes. I just got an OEM stator yesterday from a racer…the low speed coil is bad on it although the sled still runs good according to him. One give-a-way that the stator was bad is that he did say that he was running very lean jetting. He stated that “other people say nobody runs/gets away with running as lean as I do”. Only after showing guys the difference in ohms with videos ect…have I built up the credibility to prove to guys that just because a sled will start and run doesn’t mean that the stator is actually ok. I will post video soon showing the visual spark difference between a bad OEM stator and a good stator. So, as I gave this racer one of my new rewinds I told him that the 1st thing he should do is to jet up because with the correct spark intensity now the motor will run leaner and he runs the risk of burning it down. Just thought that I’d post this to inform guys…mainly racers that just because their triple cat goes down the track…doesn’t mean their stator is ok and that they are getting the full potential from their motor every time.
Case in point: Had some racers a few years ago want to just talk to me about ignitions. They had a special motor they ran and in the couple of years since they had put it together it had never consistently ran right. There were constant gremlins/issues each time out and they couldn’t put together one good run after another. I went to talk to them and looked over everything they had/were using to run with. I dispelled a few myths/rumors that other guys were telling them and let them know what they were doing would work and they didn’t need tons of expensive parts. The last thing I did was ohm out their stators. They had about 5 or 6 of them laying on the bench. Each one of them ohmed out bad. I think only 1 had rewound coils on it (that one was bad too) but the others were OEM stators and they were all bad. I told him this and he didn’t quite believe me….well at the very least was very skeptical. I took one and rewound it for him and they ran the sled a couple of weeks later and guess what??? It was the first time that sled/special motor ever ran good pass after good pass. That was a couple of years ago and it has run very good ever since.
Case in point: Had some racers a few years ago want to just talk to me about ignitions. They had a special motor they ran and in the couple of years since they had put it together it had never consistently ran right. There were constant gremlins/issues each time out and they couldn’t put together one good run after another. I went to talk to them and looked over everything they had/were using to run with. I dispelled a few myths/rumors that other guys were telling them and let them know what they were doing would work and they didn’t need tons of expensive parts. The last thing I did was ohm out their stators. They had about 5 or 6 of them laying on the bench. Each one of them ohmed out bad. I think only 1 had rewound coils on it (that one was bad too) but the others were OEM stators and they were all bad. I told him this and he didn’t quite believe me….well at the very least was very skeptical. I took one and rewound it for him and they ran the sled a couple of weeks later and guess what??? It was the first time that sled/special motor ever ran good pass after good pass. That was a couple of years ago and it has run very good ever since.