Charaging question?????
 

Yesterday I got out my 1200 for some weed spraying duty.Started up and ran just fine but when I hooked up the sprayer I noticed the amp meter was one full notch over towards the "D" side.I got done spraying and I turned on the lights without the sprayer hooked up and nooticed it was doing the same thing.I've never noticed it doing this before.Does this mean its not charging? Please say it aint so.:HeadScratch:

Put a multimeter on the battery with it off then start it and see if the voltage goes up, should be up close to 14 volts if its charging. It possible its charging but not enough or it could be a bad guage.

Should it maintain approx 14 volts with the lights on. I'm sure hoping its perhaps a bad amp meter. Gonna finish my pot of coffee and go check it out.

It should drop some but probably not enough to put the guage into the negative. When i said close to 14 i should have been more specific, if charging properly it should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 13.6 and 14.5 volts. Any less than that and it may not be charging enough.

Make sure you test it at half and full throttle, some charging systems dont produce enough at an idle and ive seen a few that would charge at half but when it went to full throttle it stopped charging

Whew, I went out and started it up it was 12.53 at the battery before cranking and 14.32 at idle.I turned on the lights and the voltage dropped just a bit and then came back up to 13.89 volts at half throttle and eventually 14.28.Thank goodness and thanks olds45512 for the tip on how to check this out.I've been needing to change the pto switch so I suppose I'll change the amp meter too.I installed a new wiring harness on it a few days ago and Im glad it wasnt anything more than that.I cant say enough good things about the quality of work that porch electric does at making wire harnesses.This was my second one from him and both were excellent and fit as if the factory had made them.Thanks again Olds45512:beerchug:

No problem, glad it turned out ok.

If you turn on a load, and it pegs the Amp Meter into the Discharge range, then one of two things is happening. (A) The load is too big for the circuit, or (B) you have some wire partially shorting to ground.