Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Can someone explain silicon rectifiers and pointless regulators to me? I'm having some electrical problems and these are the two things that I don't understand in my harness. What do they do, and what wouldn't work if one or the other went bad?

Right now when I turn the key from OFF to ACCESSORIES the headlight will come on and the starter will run when pressed (the bike won't start though) but when I switch the key to IGNITION everything goes dead. The switch is new so it's probably not that.

thanks

I'm not an electrical system expert, but this guy's page has helped me many times. He discusses rectifiers about a third of the way down... but you'll probably learn a lot by reading the whole page and eventually the whole site. He has really good info about most aspects of MC repair.

http://www.dansmc.com/electricaltesting.htm