Hello all, My car doesn't show a charge. It has a new ammmeter that shows a discharge when I put the lights on, so the meter must be ok. I stripped the generator down and cleaned it all up. The wires look original and a bit brittle but nothing seems to earth out. The brushes are perfect and insulated. The commutator looks perfect. When I put it together and wired up to a 6Volt battery it slowly spun over, so I thought it must be ok. when back on the car it still doesn't show a charge. Is there any way I can test it ? I thought maybe it's the cutout, so I disconnected that and with the engine running connected a multimeter to the live post on the generator and the body, still nothing showing. I would love to fix this myself, because the cost of posting this heavy item to the US from France will be very high. Any advice will be very much appreciated. If I can't fix it, does anyone have working one they can sell me ? Nick.
Take off the end of the generator and remove the 4 small screws holding on the brush ring. Then, check the third brush insulators on both sides. It is possible that, in adjusting the third brush, the sliding motion might have broken the hard flat fiber insulator on either side of the brush ring, allowing the third brush holder to ground out. Ron Patterson rebuilds generator brush rings using unbreakable fiberglass insulation which is much better than the old hard fiber insulator material. Jim Patrick
Also, do not run the generator without it being connected to the battery. It will self destruct in very short order. It must have a load on it or it will burn up.