bkahler

I did a quick check of a spare generator I have on the shelf and the resistance reading between the brush holder and the frame and it was infinite resistance. Hopefully the Mica insulation sheet will solve my problem.

Some new evidence has come to light. The test I described in my initial post that I indicated was successful on my generator, I decided to re-test it on the work bench. According to the information I had it appeared to pass the test again so I decided to look for youtube videos showing the same test being performed. What I found was in the videos the generators being tested ran a lot faster than mine did, by quite a margin. When I originally installed the generator it charged properly, and since I thought it passed the running test that my problem was elsewhere. After seeing it run so slow compared to the videos I decided to take the bearing plate off on the brush end of generator. What I found was the oil I had used to oil the sleeve bearing had seeped in between the brush holder frame and the generator frame. There is a piece of cardboard of sort used as insulation to isolate the brush frame from the main casing. This insulation was oil soaked. Using an ohm meter I did a resistance check and it was reading about 25 meg-ohm. That's a high resistance but I believe there should really be infinite resistance. I spent some time searching for Mica sheets and finally found some on ebay in the size I was looking for. If the USPS can manage to make the delivery I should have the Mica by the weekend or early next week. I'm not sure why there was so much oil inside the housing, possibly I didn't install it correctly during the rebuild. I'll be looking at that while waiting for the Mica. I'll let you know how it works out.

Show up at midnight at 4740 Co Rd E16 in California and you can have a set of stainless bars 😄

Los, I rebuilt the generator. I used a rebuilt armature, new brushes, bearings, etc. I just talked to a generator repair shop and I told him about the running test where you connect B+ voltage to the armature and the generator runs. The next test is to short the F terminal to ground and it should slow down and it does. The shop said the generator should be good if it does that and mine does. That leaves the wiring or the regulator. I swapped out the electronic regulator for a NOS regulator and no change. I have one more NOS regulator that I will try to day, hoping for it to work!

JB, what you're describing would imply that there is zero voltage at the B connection on the voltage regulator. Looking at the wiring diagram the ammeter gets voltage from the starter/battery connection. If the ammeter wasn't functioning then no voltage should be present at the B connection. On mine, I have a solid 12volts at the B connection. Am I missing something?

Freshly rebuilt 12v generator. I have a couple of NOS regulators and a voltage regulator that I had someone convert to solid state. What baffles me is the NOS regulator gave the exact same results as the solid state regulator. Zero volts on the Field terminal and the Armature terminal. I'm going to look closer at the grounding to see if it's ok. That's the way of the modern world we live in....

While I was driving to get tires on my truck the generator stopped charging the battery. My first thought was maybe the solid state voltage regulator that I have installed had failed. So the first thing I did was to disconnect the regulator and perform a test on the generator itself to make sure it was ok. I performed the following test on the generator and it passed the test. To test a generator remove the belt and unhook the F terminal on the generator. Using a heavy wire run battery positive to the A terminal on the generator. It should spin fast like a motor. While motoring, ground the F terminal. It should slow down but continue to motor. if these tests pass, time to test the wires. Next I replaced the electronic voltage regulator with a New Old stock Rebuilt Replacement unit. I got the same results, no charging. There is zero voltage on the Armature and the Field connections. I did perform the polarization of both regulators before starting the vehicle so it shouldn't be a polarization issue. I have one more NOS voltage regulator that I'm going to install. If that doesn't resolve the issue, any suggestions on where to look next?

Kinda like my skin The ride was definitely better with the new tires. For some reason during the drive my generator decided to stop charging the battery so now I need to resolve that issue before I can drive it again

Merle, as a matter of fact I have the Rusty Hope conversion. Thank you for that little tidbit of info. I'm guessing it is the width of the plates that were added to hold the calipers. Guess what I'm doing this week...

The two on the right are correct and likely the original plugs, because service bulletins eventually changed them to a BPR6EY. The one on the left, who knows what went through the head of the guy who installed it, probably not much....

The darn things looked brand new. The guys at the tire store were shocked at their condition. I added up the miles and they had no more than 17 miles on them in 29 years According to my B series owners manual the largest tire would have been 6.50x16. 6.5 tires have a diameter of 29.1" The radials I installed have a diameter of 29.29 inches. Close enough for me It was mostly grins except when two pickups pulling trailers came around a curve and one of them kicked a stone up into the air and it landed on the cab roof I still haven't looked up there to see what if any kind of mark it left. Oh well....

For the time being I will be running it as is. I've got a laundry list of things I want to take care of and the toe-in is not a pressing issue. Best thing I ever did to brake rotors was to have them cryogenically treated. Those things lasted for ever.

You might consider just looking for any suitable oil filter housing. There are a variety out there and most were dealer or owner installed during that time frame. It's not as if you are breaking protocol

Those are some big suckers

That sounds like a good idea, once I can find a source for one that doesn't doesn't cost $35. I'm tempted to use one from some other vehicle but I don't know if the capacitance is the same between vehicles. I've believe I've eliminated any sort of electrical problem and same for fuel delivery. All seems to be good there. What I'm not seeing is much suction into the carburetor. I'm going to check for compression and go from there.

I drove into town this morning and had new tires (225/75R16 Solarus HT BL 104T 4-ply) mounted. Back when I was assembling the front end (fall of 2020) I just eyeballed the toe-in and moved on. Last week when I drove to the gas station to fill up the steering was, well interesting Yesterday I finally took the time to check and adjust the toe-in, so it's not to surprising that the toe-in was out by 1-7/16". I started adjusting and got it to about 1/4" before I ran out of adjustment. The tie rod tube is bottomed out against the ball joint on the right side and just about bottoming out on the left side. I don't remember if the tie rod is original to the truck or if I grabbed a replacement out of a junkyard. It's kinda straight but isn't perfect by any means. I just looked at DCM Classics site and they sell a new rod, but they mention that it has jam nuts. My tube is split on each end and uses clamps to keep it tight. I'm now debating on whether to replace mine or shorten it so I can get toe-in set correctly. I also looked a little closer at the difference in the speedometer reading and the gps, and at 30 mph on the speedometer the gps is showing 50 mph. The only other issue that I noticed is the voltage regulator that I had converted to a new high dollar electronic voltage regulator seems to have bit the dust. I'll stick a NOS regulator on to see if it starts charging, if it does then I have the joy of dealing with either getting my money back or getting it fixed I almost forgot to mention, when they were spin balancing the wheels most of them had a little bit of wobble and one of them had a fair amount of wobble. The one with the most wobble is now the spare. Despite all of the above, it was a fun drive into town and back!

After cleaning a bunch of connectors, replacing the ignition switch, resetting the point gap (it was only a few thousands) and installing three new plugs the ignition system seems to be functional. The condenser itself seems to check out but I will be replacing it in the near future, it is the original one as near as I can tell. The only issue now is it only runs on starter fluid. The new carburetor does not seem to be carburating That's next on the agenda to sort out. Thanks!

A number of years ago, the reproduction condensers for Triumph sports cars were all crap. We all started hanging onto our 30 year old condensers and used them instead of new replacements. I'll be digging into the ignition system tomorrow morning so stay tuned....

Thanks for that little tidbit

That's when you get up behind a semi and draft.... 😉

Your little mileage chart only lists the fastest time, it doesn't list the slowest Two weeks at best would likely be more appropriate, one way. That is assuming I have the wind behind my back both ways 🤣

Lettering the tailgate is on the bucket list. It won't be done by me. When I was a kid I never could color within the lines, so I'll find someone better qualified

Oddly enough I have an spark tester exactly like yours I did test one spark plug before I wrote posted about it and I didn't see any spark. I tried starting it a few minutes ago and no spark and it obviously didn't start. Here's a little more background information. The Cushman was purchased with out a distributor. The correct distributor was sourced and new points, condenser, and cap were installed before the distributor was installed to the engine. I'm going to start by pulling the distributor (it can only be fitted one way so it can't be 180 out) and looking things over inside and verifying all is correct. I find it odd that the previous owner had misplaced the distributor. That kind of leads me to think there was some sort of electrical issue which is why the distributor was removed. I'll let you know what I find.

I'm helping someone trying to get a Cushman Truckster 3 cylinder engine to start and stay running. The symptoms are it will sometimes start and run for a few seconds and then it dies. It will do this multiple times and eventually not fire at all. You can go back and try again later in the day or the next day and the same thing happens. Many other people have worked on it before it came to me trying to resolve this issue. To the best of my knowledge they all focused on the carburetor and fuel system. I know for a fact that the fuel system is/was messed up. It was supposed to have a bypass fuel filter that would bleed excess fuel back to the fuel tank, however the bypass filter was not installed until just recently. The other issue was the original carburetor had two faulty solenoids and parts are no longer available so I replaced the carburetor yesterday with a new replacement. The new replacement carburetor has been used in the same application before without issues. Before trying to start the engine I also replaced the three spark plugs. Here's a picture of what they looked like. See any problems? After installing the carburetor I tried starting it and it fired right off after a cranking for a bit. It ran for about 10 seconds and died. I restarted it and it fired right up and ran pretty good for about 10 seconds and died. This repeated a couple of times but each time it ran for shorter periods and ran rougher. Now it won't fire at all. This sort of behavior is what others had reported as well with the original carburetor although they reported that it always ran really poorly. My gut feel is the condenser in the distributor is likely failing. I'm not knowledgeable enough on what symptoms a bad/failing condenser can exhibit but I'm thinking as the condenser is getting hot it starts to fail and after it cools down it works for a bit until it gets hot again. I'm going to try and start it again later this afternoon to see what happens. I guess the bottom line is, I think it's got an electrical problem of some kind. Thoughts?

You're being too polite, its a Royal PITA 😄