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Mon Jul 09, 2012 10:11 am

My bus sat for about 2 years. When parked the generator, a five year old unit at the time, worked fine. I recently refreshed the engine and now the generator does not work, well it puts out about 3 volts...
Anyway, I shined up the commutator, my brushes are fine, I polarized the sucker (it did spin) but still nothing but 3 volts measured at the generator, voltage regulator disconnected and gennies grounded to the frame. I've put about 100 miles on it hoping it would spring back to life like Frankenstein's monster, but no luck.
Obviously I need a new one, but what would cause it to fail just sitting there?

Mon Jul 09, 2012 5:45 pm

There might not be anything wrong with the generator: it could be the
regulator (corroded relay contacts, for example). The Bentley service manual has a section with tests you can
make on generator/regulator to determine which part is bad.

Mon Jul 09, 2012 7:14 pm

Mine was like that. Turned out that the field coils have a pair of joined wires inside the case to link them together, the joined end was bare, and was grounding to the frame resulting in ultra-low field and practically no voltage. Capped it off, polarized it and it was back to 12v instantly.

Mon Jul 09, 2012 9:09 pm

there are different things that cause that, but in genral the germans put some smoke in them, and if you let the smoke out most of the time they just stop working,& think lucas started it a long time ago.and since a lot of companys have done the same(lucas didnt bother patenting it I reckon), but lucas does have a replacement smoke kit avaliable.I havent seen it in a while but there should still be some nos kits out there.Im sure glenn or darth knows where it can be found.

Mon Jul 09, 2012 9:35 pm

mark tucker wrote: there are different things that cause that, but in genral the germans put some smoke in them, and if you let the smoke out most of the time they just stop working,& think lucas started it a long time ago.and since a lot of companys have done the same(lucas didnt bother patenting it I reckon), but lucas does have a replacement smoke kit avaliable.I havent seen it in a while but there should still be some nos kits out there.Im sure glenn or darth knows where it can be found.

Well, I guess a metaphysical theory is as good as any...