Polarize your Voltage Regulator

[HanksB3B]

I Googled "How to Polarize your Generator " this morning and found a few really good things. The first one had the sentence "Every time you disconnect your Battery you must Polarize your Generator"

Well Duuhhh no wonder these past months I've had a couple of no-start-please-push situations. I didn't realize when I use my Quick Disconnect I have to Re-polarize. Ahhh no wonder the needle just stays in the middle.

These days a person can learn just about anything on YouTube. I found a video that had a technician that demonstrated the procedure in a "hands-on how-to" video. Simple as it would seem I view it and make up a rhyme so that I can remember the correct procedure "Hold the BAT and touch the FLD" O.K. got it I won't mess up.

I get down to the truck and I see a diagram of the housing of the regulator which clearly shows touching the BAT to the ARM, so I go with that and touch the bat and arm figuring quality control back in 51 couldn't be that bad. I start the truck up and give it a little gas, it works!

I decide to maintain a wire attached to the BAT terminal with a capped bullet connector for next time.

Hank

Edited June 24, 2010 by HanksB3B

[Don Coatney]

Just for fun you should google how to polorize your generator.

[HanksB3B]

is that what I'm doing Polarizing the Generator ? I'll fix the text...Is that better?

Thanks,

Hank

[Young Ed]

And I disagree with having to redo it when you disconnect the battery. I've had the batteries disconnected in both my car and truck many many times including nov-april every winter and I've never had to redo it and they both charge just fine.

[Dodgeb4ya]

Hank,

Your Red "Arm" wire at the regulator looks like too small guage of wire! It looks the same size as the correct #16ga. green field wire next to it. The wire actually looks like it has been getting hot too. It is supposed to be a #10 red. It's a bit hard to tell from your picture, but if it is sized wrong charging issues could result.

Bob

[HanksB3B]

Will definately check that out.

Hank

Hank,

Your Red "Arm" wire at the regulator looks like too small guage of wire! It looks the same size as the correct #16ga. green field wire next to it. The wire actually looks like it has been getting hot too. It is supposed to be a #10 red. It's a bit hard to tell from your picture, but if it is sized wrong charging issues could result.

Bob

[TodFitch]

is that what I'm doing Polarizing the Generator ? I'll fix the text...Is that better?

Thanks,

Hank

And you only need to polarize your generator under two conditions:

1) When the residual magnetic field in it's iron core gets too weak. It gets reinforced/regenerated every time it puts out power and only gradually diminishes with time. We are talking years here, not hours. My generator went 20 years on the shelf without that happening.

2) If you are changing from positive ground to negative ground (or back).

Polarizing your generator every time you disconnect the regulator is bogus. The generator is electrically disconnected every time you stop your engine. And you don't need to polarize the generator every time you start the car.

[Merle Coggins]

I'm with the other guys here. I've never had to polarize my generator. I had it gone through by a local shop, bolted it on and it's been working fine ever since. I've had the battery disconnected several times during the rebuilding process, and during other projects since. I've never had to do anything more than reconnect the battery and crank it up.

Merle

[HanksB3B]

I won't bother to hunt down the article that said that you need to polarize everytime you disconnected your battery. You'll just have to trust me that I saw it somewhere. For some (probably explainable) reason mine needed to be re-polarized. I didn't do or remove any component of wire other than the quick disconnect. I will replace the arm wire with 10ga red wire.

Thanks,

Hank

[Dave72dt]

I found the article (google) and in it it said to defdinitely not to touch the F terminal with the Bat. What it didn't say was there are two distinctive generator setups, delco being the dominant style, the other, Autolite and they are polarized differently. You did yours the correct way for the system you have and you shouldn't need to polarize again unless you pull the gen apart and work on it.