[archibald tuttle]

this thread has a pretty good sequential chain of diagnosis tips. and its got the right title.

so i had a bad voltage regulator and replaced. it charged for maybe 6 months and then stopped. of course i hadn't committed the charging circuit to memory and I had put a cigarette lighter tap at the battery to run a sprayer i towed behind, so i put a cigarette plug on a harbor freight charger and just been running it that way for a couple years, like a plug in hybrid so to speak.

just had to tear it down to fix leaking head gasket and got into the while you're there department. so the field wire is showing continuity to ground but i pulled it and made a ground jumper from the field terminal and still no charge. a tiny bit of voltage pops up when i ground the field terminal, 1/4 or 1/3 volt.

generic generator testing procedure says check the brushes and polarity although the thing runs perfectly fine as the starter when i engage the solenoid so i'm thinking that can't be the problem. just about to pull the generator and take it to the armature shop but thought i'd crowdsource my logic.

thanks,

brian