Re: Battery making a mess

Posted by John Regan on July 28, 1998 at 23:33:38

In Reply to: Re: Battery making a mess
posted by Glen Weilbaker on July 23, 1998 at 10:47:07

I agree with Glen that it sounds like you may have the 3rd brush of your generator set too high.Old service manuals call for a very high setting of over 10 amps which I have found is generally way too high.Modern batteries are usually overcharged with that setting since that recommendation was for driving which was much slower in the era of the A than our modern driving.On the A 3 BRUSH generators you increase the output by rotating the 3rd brush mechanism in the same direction that the generator turns.Remember that if you don't have your third brush plate mounted tight - it can self advance because of this.I recommend no more than 3-4 amps setting of the 3rd brush for 90% day driving.If you drive for an hour at night you will not discharge your battery very much since it is about an 80 Amp-Hour device and that means you could drive it 8 hours with a 10 amp load before it would be dead.Since lights are about 10-12 amps then with 4 amps charge rate you would only be discharging about 6-8 amps which would not be a problem for an hour or so.Only if you drive a lot at night would I recommend a temporary increase in the 3rd brush setting to 10 amps but would suggest you return the setting to 3-4 immediately after that to prevent overcharge of the battery.
Good luck.
Voltage regulator for Model A - 3 brush generators

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