I took a trip to the boonies of Argentina. On the estancia I visited they had an ancient tractor with a bad charging system (24 volts). It had a new Prestolite alternator and a mechanical regulator. I opened the regulator and found the contacts solidly welded together, so bad that I had to do considerable damage to separate them -- a total loss. So I had the ranch owner write down the numbers on the side of the alternator and on his next trip to town he bought a new electronic regulator, and I installed it for him. On this Prestolite alternator, one end of the field is grounded and the regulator feeds it from the high side. A holdover design from the days of mechanical regulators. The ranch owner didn=B4t seem to have any trouble finding a solid-state 24 volt regulator for an alternator with high-side field control in a small town in Patagonia. I would have thought it would be a job to find such a thing even in the States.
- posted
14 years ago