I spent a few more minutes poking around my suspect regulator last night.
Here's what I found.
The regulator is a Standard model VR-35.
On startup, the Ammeter shows a few seconds of heavy charging, as you would
expect, so I think the generator is OK.
After a little warmup, the ammeter begins it's dance, between just under
zero, and about 10A discharge. at idle. Headlights were on. Bringing up the
revs does nothing to change this.
Idling, with the cover off the regulator, I observed the following:
The top relay, next to the "B" terminal (open when unpowered), is banging
open and closed at a rate equal to the twitches of the ammeter.
The middle relay, near the F terminal (closed unpowered) appears closed.
The bottom relay, near the "A" terminal (D on our schematics, closed
unpowered) appears closed but is sparking a little like it's trying to open.
The contacts on all three relays appeared to be OK, and I cleaned them with
an extremely fine abrasive paper, resulting in no change.
I may be an EE, but I've never messed with this stuff before. Does this
suggest anything to anyone out there?
Does anyone make an electronic equivalent to this regulator? No, Al, I'm
not going to switch to an alternator.
Stu
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