Re: Voltage Regulator Question


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Posted by D. Sherman on Sunday, April 06, 2008 at 23:00:12 :

In Reply to: Voltage Regulator Question posted by dave horvath on Sunday, April 06, 2008 at 21:54:06 :

That's a puzzle. Electromechanical regulators don't have polarity, so that's not it, unless your generator got un-polarized, which is unlikely in such a short time. The current "demand" of the battery shouldn't matter since the regulators usually have a current limit as well as a voltage limit. If it's a 3-coil regulator, the coil with the heavy wire is the current regulator coil. If it's a 2-coil regulator, the current and voltage coils are wound one on top of the other. In any case, the contacts will normally "buzz" lightly, with a tiny spark in them, but I wouldn't call it "arcing". A diode isn't the solution, because it would have to carry gobs of current (full max generator output, which requires a heat sink), and it's inherent voltage drop would keep your battery from getting fully charged unless you adjusted the regulator for an extra .7 volts. Unfortunately, without looking at it with my meter, I can't think of anything off-hand that might cause that problem. It couldn't be something as simple as going from an 8 (8.4) volt battery to a 6 (6.3) volt one or vice versa, is it? I know some guys run a 4-cell battery on a "6 volt" system to get a little extra cranking power. Other than that all I can think of is some intermittent short or open someplace that just coincidentally happened to short or open when you swapped batteries and jiggled the wires.



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