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OK, got to chime in on this one. First of all the Honda Manual not only sucks regarding diagnosing this issue, it lies. The manual says if voltage not high enough at battery, then change the regulator/rectifier. Don't believe it. It tells you to check winding resistance to check the stator. Unless you have extremely accurate ohmmeter this is very difficult to measure and does not really tell you anything, unless a winding is open or shorted.

The thing you must do is to check the output voltage at the yellow wires, wire to wire with the bike running at speed (in neutral of course unless you are really talented) and the stator disconnected at the three way connector. The exact reading is not that important and as the output is ac at an unknown frequency and will vary depending upon what type of voltmeter you are using (now if you have a scope!!!!). Likely will read 10v plus. The important thing is that the voltage be the same between all combinations of the wires (leg1 to leg2, leg1 to leg 3, and leg2 to leg3). If not the same, the stator is shot!!!! Plain and simple. Too bad it took me three years of dinking around to finally use some common sense.

The stator is effectively a 3 phase generator connected in a delta configuration. There are effectively 3 coils each connected end to end (envision a triangle where each leg is a generator coil). Each of the yellow wires connects to one end of each of two coils, total three coils, hence 3 wires. The output is ac. The regulator/rectifier creates a crude dc output that should be well above 13/14 volts when the engine is 'at speed'.

Now for the 'world according to Garp'. My opinion is that the most likely reason the connectors and wiring is burned is due to the stator failing. The burning is the symptom, not the problem. Here is how it appears to work. If one leg of the stator starts to go bad the current drawn from the other two legs increases, which causes overheating in the stator, the wiring and the connectors. And since none of it is oversized to begin with, you get burning. By the way, once burned replace them.

My guess is that the number one cause of alternator failing is the battery, not other loads placed on the bike, in combination with a poorly manufactured stator. Yes I am certain you can overload it with stuff, but there are so many people with this problem it needs to be related to something that every T has. And number one load is likely the battery as it starts to go die. The stator at idle does not put out nearly enough oomph (technical term) to supply the bike as the voltage is speed dependent and at idle there ain't much. So, bike draws from the battery at idle and low speeds. Once the battery starts to go bad, the battery also draws constantly from the stator, thus putting an additional large burden on the stator, ie the entire bike at idle when voltage is low plus trying to charge the battery. And of course the regulator is trying to up the voltage by putting more burden on the stator.

Friend of mine told me early on that i would need to replace the battery every two years because the batteries are too small to begin with. Had I been smart enough to listen to him, I would have saved myself a lot of hassle, time and money. By the way, my pretty new (blue no less) nonOEM stator is running just fine thank you, regardless of which of the 3 rectifier/regulators I use (even the two the manual said were bad). Was not difficult to install, if I had done it before it is like a couple of hours to do. I have light bar, radio, etc etc on it. Will be putting on heated grips and likely seat as well.

Well anyway, you have now heard from someone who is a born again convert. If it is a Honda Shadow and the problem is electrical, replace the stator first!!! Wish I had. And sorry bout the length and tone of this.