gen light on then fixed story for others

[choppachris]

I'm going to go ahead and post this so maybe someone else trying to get the gen light to go off can take my case into consideration. The light can come on for many different reasons, but in my case it was simply bad brushes. Now I am not as experienced as some when it comes to working on my own VW so the first thing I did wrong was to replace only one brush, the top one that's easy to see. Yes, I kicked myself when I realized there is in fact two brushes, then proceeded to change the bottom one which is a bit tricky. Another problem that occured was that the springs that hold the brushes in place were rusty and one broke while taking the old brush out. So I went and pulled two springs off another gen I have for parts not paying much attention as I did. When I tried to put them back on I found that the spring did not press firmly on the brush. It took a little while to figure out how I was going to wind this spring up inside that little opening in the generator. I wound up being able to put the spring on with the holding end 180 degrees from where I needed it, facing inward toward the spinning part, then using a small piece of wire looped it around the spring end I needed and pulled it up through to where it needed to be. And just like that, my gen light went off. I Hope this helps at least one person out there.
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dubless

[67jason]

good info. i wonder how many generators have been replaced when all that was needed was a new set of brushes?
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67 bug x3
67 ghia
64 bug