polarizing a ford generator.

[andreasklapp]

so i did a search and found one brief thread about polarizing a 6 volt pos ground, and was just looking for advice or verification that i did/am doing this right. found a procedure in a manual at this shop i know, says basically: with battery in car and engine off, disconnect field and batt from regulator and momentarily connect the two. do i need to disconnect them from the regulator? or can i just cross them for a second with them still connected? i don't really have a way to test it at the moment, i don't have my ammeter wired in yet, and i'm using the fact that i just ran the galaxie out of gas as my excuse to start welding on the body.any help.

 

[Tripper]

Wow... it's been a *long* time since I've thought about this issue. Sorry I can't remember how it's done but that sounds about right. Good luck & maybe someone can chip in here!

BoB

 

[Sniper]

This should help.

 

[andreasklapp]

that is an interesting read, i've messed up a generator in a vw pretty bad by doing something like that before (actually about three times, once because it wasn't polarized, once because of cooling and alignment issues, and once it was polarized, but wired wrong). the thing that throws me off (and kind of scares me) is that i was reading in this manual to jump it between the batt and field terminals, but with each disconnected from the regulator, but every one seems to have a slightly different procedure, like some they say you don't need to disconnect either of them, some say you only have to disconnect the field, some say you absolutely have to disconnect both, some between batt and gen or armature, etc... and the only thing i really have to go by for the moment is the status of the idiot light and any sort of heat build up in gen or batt or reg. it'll be a little while before i run it again, i'll have to dig around some more, and figure out how to wire up this ammeter i've got.

 

[doggone]

I have back in the day would cross both post with a screwdriver while its running just for a sec. or two... may have to do it more than once, as I remember...... hope this helps you

 

[Sniper]

the thing that throws me off (and kind of scares me) is that i was reading in this manual to jump it between the batt and field terminals .

You don't touch the field terminal, that will let out all of the magic smoke, and you know how hard it is to put that all back in!!

 

[2muchtorque]

Sniper, great stuff but I have a question. Page 3 has the refrerence by John Deere Corp. as the meaning of F.O.S. being " fundamentals of service ", so all these years have I been telling misquided, ilinformed, delusional knuckleheads who stretch the truth and lie and are obviously F.O.S. - they are just " fundamentals of service" ? [S I know, time for my meds[cl

 

[andreasklapp]

so i called my grandpa about this, just to find out what he had to say. he said basically the procedure i wrote down is right, but an easier way to do it is to just jump the two terminals at the generator instead. he also said something he does with one of his old john deere tractors that runs six volt is when he needs more output for lights or whatever, he grounds the field terminal at the generator to the generator, which makes the generator put out more charge (or maybe full charge all the time), or with some kinds of regulators there are adjusting screw inside that will change the way the generator charges. have yet to try any of this but i trust his word 100%. i'm always amazed at the amount of information that man has in his head.