recieved my r/r in the mail today, which i bought on ebay. i asked them before i bought it if it was an oem unit or after market. they told me oem, but when i got it today... it came in a tour max box. the numbers on the back of the r/r are "SH693-12 T4.7 041". i am assuming that the "SH" in the begin mean that it is the oem manufacturer shindengen. but with the tour max box it came in, which says regulator rectifier on it, it's hard to be sure. anybody know for sure?

 

Can't answer your question, Inde, but read something of interest in the shop manual last night.
The battery is good for 2 or 3 years in the VTR and when the bike is operated with a slowly dying battery, the weak cell or cells in the battery are constantly calling for charge and taxing the charging system. A persistant thread here is bad R/R s so maybe they can be avoided with battery updates more often ? Hope this helps.

 

It's a shame to HAVE to do this but it's a good idea. I said it in other R/R threads and I'll say it here, it's really good to have a voltmeter to monitor the situation and thus be able to see when things start to change.

Here's a FAQ page with lot's of choices:

http://faq.f650.com/FAQs/AftermarketVoltmeterFAQ.htm