Ah, the Conversion Wars!

Posted by A. Bohemian on April 08, 2007 at 08:53:12 from (207.170.88.151):

In Reply to: losingcharge posted by dustin 47 m on April 07, 2007 at 20:38:17:

You will get all kinds of answers on this one, many of them contradictory. That's the nature of the internet.

If the regulator is tweaked to allow something a little OVER eight volts, my humble understanding is that the generator should be capable of charging the battery.

However, you provide us with precious little information. As a prominent poster on another board says, "Use LOTS OF WORDS to describe your problem."

One of the things we don't know is if you did this conversion yourself. If not, the person who did the conversion may already have tweaked the regulator, and you may just have a dead battery.

So, here I go with a How to Make a Different Kind of Watch:

The ammeter on the dashboard of your tractor does several jobs. It can allow you to monitor and diagnose the condition of the coil/points circuit in your ignition system, and it can allow you to monitor and diagnose the condition of your charging system.

When the tractor first starts, the ammeter should show a charge of ten amps or there abouts. After a few minutes of running, the voltage regulator will sense the battery has reached the correct voltage.

The regulator will then trip and the the ammeter should show little or no charge, and occasionally even a slight discharge as the battery "floats" across the system. If the lights are switched on, or if the tractor is run long enough, the voltage regulator will sense the drop in voltage and revert to the "high" charge condition.

This is all how the designers intended it. However, we have a new variable, the conversion.

The next time you start your tractor, as soon as you get it running, check the voltage right across the battery terminals with a voltmeter.

It is imperative that this check be made with the ammeter still showing a high charge rate.

If the ammeter still shows about ten amps, and the voltmeter shows much more than eight volts, say nine and a bit, the regulator has already been tweaked.

If it shows a little more than six volts (my Super C with the ORIGINAL generator and an after-market Chinese voltage regulator shows a hair over seven volts), it probably HAS NOT been tweaked.

Now comes the best part; from the symptoms you describe, I strongly suspect these readings will check out, that the generator is providing close to ten amps charge, and that the voltage regulator (providing you did NOT do the conversion yourself, in which case you already know whether I'm right or wrong about this) has been tweaked to provide nine volts or so charging voltage, and that all you need is a new battery.

There's a whole 'nother chapter to this book about PIE and about how much power your generator should be putting out if it's in good shape, but this reply is already way too long.

Check back in and let us know how it goes.

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