POSITIVE and NEGATIVE VOLTAGE REGULATORS

The contact material for the upper and lower cutout contacts is (was) made of material appropriate for it's location (polarity).

'Most all regulators you're gonna find today are from "The Land of Almost Right", and I doubt if they give a (Chinese) rat's patoot about the quality "old ways" of making regulators, though, and I'll bet they use "one size fits a;;" materials for the contact points, regardless of system polarity.

If I get time I might research this question cuz we have all seen it before. Like Frank I kind of see them working at either polarity cuz current through a coil still produces a magnetic field and regardless of their wired polarity WE DO NOT change the individual polarities or windings of any internal relay/coils. Its the same reasoning that a tractor starter motor still turns the same direction regardless of polarity cuz we dont reverse the fields or armature windings with respect to each other as is done on a reversible DC motor.

Anyone agree or disagree or wanna arm wrestle this question lol Wish my old IHC buddy Bob M were here or maybe the other Bob or Gerald has some thoughts to add to this or Franks post?????

John T

Now when it comes to solid state regulators, they won't stand any reversed polarity. And many of the replacement regulators in the auto stores are no longer relay or magnetic but are all solid state but packaged to LOOK LIKE the original regulators. They are often made for alternators and I don't have any experience with them for generators. But I'd think they might demand generator flashing before connecting the new regulator to the circuit. I know when one I designed for a steam locomotive got reversed polarity it let all the smoke out and turned all the power parts to charcoal. I also know that had I anticipated they would apply AC to the regulator, I could have designed to to work at AC, because I designed one for an alternator once.

I also know that the parts books on the counter at the local car parts place won't say whether a particular regulator is solid state or magnetic/relay.

The last new magnetic/relay regulator that came into my possession required tweaking to charge properly. Its worked fine for the last 19 years, giving long battery life and accepting relatively heavy electrical loads running my electric field sprayer pump.

Gerald J.