charging or not

K

kendall

Senior Member
what is the best way to check to see if your generator is charging the battery with a volt meter??????
 
Hook a voltmeter to the battery, rev it up and see if the voltage increases. Should go from around 6v to 7.5v
 
if you just want to know if its charging or not, start engine, pull off the ground cable, if the engine dies the generator is not charging, if the engine keeps running the generator is ok, the regulator is bad, now take a few minutes to read all the posts telling you im a stupid idiot for sugessting that, and all the reasons you shouldnt do it
 
I did that on my model A once, stock 6V batt and generator and my lights got REALY bright and blew out both headlights and tail light. So it might be ok to do it just dont have any lights on...
 
Ya, it's probably not a good idea on a three brush generator with no other form of regulator/current limiter. If you disconnect the ground there is nothing to control the out put of the generator. Two brush usually has a three pole regulator box with a seperate cut out and current limiter. The current limiter will most likely still function if the battery is taken out of the circuit. We do that on aircraft alternator systems to quickly check them. Most aircraft have a battery switch that can take it off line and an alternator switch so it can be taken off line in an emergency situation. Switch the battery off and the alternator should stay on line in higher rpm operation than idle. I wouldn't do it too long though. Cecil/WV has the safest idea for checks with a volt meter. Generated voltage should always be higher than battery voltage as long as the rpm is up from idle.

Kerby
 
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