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Posted by T-roy on Sunday, March 15, 2009 at 17:18:00 :
I have been fighting an excessive charge rate on my ammeter for a while now. It is on my 48 b-1 Power-Wagon. Today I went out and it would barely crank over but started. The battery is 6 volt less than 4 months old. I searched the archieves and I have done the same thing as Vaughn did in 2001 (see below). I replaced the gen with a different one I had on hand. My conclusion now is a bad wire (short). Any suggestions?
Posted by Vaughn on Saturday, May 19, 2001 at 3:34PM :
Thought I would pass on a problem I had and what I found was the cause.
About a year ago, my amp meter started registering 25-30 amps all of a sudden. Although I wondered what might be causing it, I didn't worry too much, the battery was staying charged and everything seemed to be working ok.
About two weeks ago, my amp meter would charge when the engine was cold and fall back to a zero charge after the engine warmed. I took of the voltage regulator and filed the points, polarized it once again, the amp meter then showed a charge and little later the problem returned.
I thought maybe the problem might be the generator so I took off the wire going to the arm terminal of the voltage regulator, set the engine to a fast idle, and struck the wire against a ground resulting in nice blue sparks indicating the generator was working. So I thought the problem was the voltage regulator. Went to NAPA, gave the OEM number and they gave me a VR204 voltage regulator.
After installing the new regulator, system was charging although still at the high rate and worked for a couple of miles on a test run. I thought the problem was resolved until I went for a drive the next morning, same old problem returned. Now I thought I better look at the generator so I pulled it off. After taking off the Commutator end plate assembly, I looked around, bushes were still in good shape, but I found that the wire connecting the two fields had one layer of masking tape that had finally gave up creating a short. I thought to myself, "who in the world would put only one layer of tape to insulate that wire"
The bare part of the wire is about 2 inches long so I got a piece of heat shrink rap, cut it the length and then down one side. I put that on and the rapped with electrical tape. After putting the generator back on, the amps now read 7-10, problem solved and it's back in normal operation!
For those of you that may have a high amps reading, you may want to pull your generator, check the following:
1. Brushes - These should be about an inch in length;
2. Look for shinny areas on the armature and fields. That's an indication of a worn bearing and bushing that you'll need to replace,
3. Rap that wire!
T-roy
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