Well, I looked at all 3 dead stabilizers. It looks as if they all failed for
different reasons! The old original looks as if the contacts just got too
dirty and failed to close. Gauges therefore were reading ZERO.
The next one turns out to have been a solid state design! A resistor,
transistor, and a diode (Randall is guessing it is a zener, but I can't tell,
and it is blown. So is the transistor, but I can tell what it was by the
numbers). The solid state parts died, and I will never know exactly why. IT
resulted in the gauges reading HIGH At the time it died, I was having a
problem with bad silicone core ignition wires, so the transients may have been
particularly bad.
The last one was another mechanical one, and this one had the heater wire for
the bimetallic arm burn thru the insulation in an area. This made the
resistance of the heater wire much less, and maybe it was getting too hot.
The gauges were reading way too LOW, but not zero.
These things are not cheap! I had all parts on hand to make a well designed
(I hope) regulator that should be tough enough for the automotive environment.
It is installed and working. The problem with this type is that when the
engine is OFF, then you may not be able to get a good 10 volts out of it.
With the engine running, then the extra voltage from the generator will allow
it to deliver a full 10 regulated volts.
I can give the design to people if they are interested.
-Tony
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