Correct me if I'm wrong..............
These old gen. have to hit a higher than idle RPM before they charge to battery....therefore they dont charge at idle....
Also, when you "polarize" battery are you just making contact between the field post and battery post on the gen. via a jumper wire? And is this done before or after the battery is hooked up on the circuit?
Ed

 

I remove wires at regulator and touch them together. While engine is off.
Thats the way I was learned.

 

Once in late 70's me and a buddy were going back to college for the weekend as alums to have a good time. I was in my pretty good looking '55 Chevy 2 door sedan. It was a 3 hr ride and part way the generator went out. We ended up driving down Interstate 80 in Central PA with no lights on. When a car or truck came up from behind I turned on the parking lights so they could see me. If I turned the headlights on the engine would cut out. And it was lightly raining, so I used the wipers sparingly. When I turned them on the the engine would cut out. We ended up driving with our heads out the window so we could see the lines in the road. Very hairy and scarey but I did not want to leave my '55 sitting along I-80 on a friday night. We made it safely and the guys would not believe our story but they should of since our hair had the windswept look!

The next day I went ot a junk yard and got another genny.

 

The cut-out relay disconnects the generator whenever the gen output is less voltage than the battery. If there is no battery, anything the gen makes is available, the cut-out relay is closed.

 

I hope you have some mighty strong arms, the compression ratio of most modern diesels is around 19:1. It would be kind of hard to get that turning fast enough by hand to start.

 

The answer is TRUE. you can run on the battery alone. Daytime driving much longer than nighttime with lights naturally. An engine running at idle can drain a battery because a generator puts out very little power at idle, however an alternator will charge a battery at idle you just have to be careful about overheating, just sitting there with little air movement.Some gererator idiot lights will light up at idle showing there is little or no output on generator at idle.
later Mike

 

actually, that's an old wives tale about alternators, they too put out very little at idle, it's just their voltage output curve increases quickly then levels off, whereas a generator output vs rpm is more linear.

 

TRUE ! had it happen to me when I had a '62 Buick (twice )

 

I had a similar experience years ago. I had driven to Daytona Beach for the Turkey run and my homemade alternator bracket broke on my 327 Chevy powered 1934 Plymouth. I went to a garage and had them put a two hour charge on the battery (that's all the time I had because I had to leave early enough to get home before dark). I drove it all the way home (90 miles to Jacksonville in about 1.5 hours) with no alternator and no fan or water pump belt. The air passing through the radiator was just enough to keep the water pump turning so it didn't run hot.

 

If you want to get rid of the battery use a magneto. Then use a self regulated Alternator for the electrical power which you will need to use the Tach circuit for the initial excitation voltage to get the alternator up and running after you use an air starter to start the engine. An AC pump converted to compress air works well but don't forget to use a drip oiler on the air compressor intake or the AC pump will burn up and with an oil separator on the output side you can recover the oil and run it through the pump again. A better option would be to get an actual air pump, which is what was on my setup. With two 7inch-diameter air tanks mounted inside the frame you have about 8 good solid start attempts before the tanks get low.

I used the above on my old 1954 Military Studebaker 6X6. It would sit for a couple months at a time before I got it full enough to take to the scrap yard to empty and I took it camping numerous times. It never had a battery in it save for the D cells in my Mag lights. I drove that truck for 6 years and never had a problem with the starting system. Oh and it had a killer set of Air horns.

The only thing the battery is for is starting the engine and supplying a small excitation voltage for the charging system. After that everything runs off the generator/alternator. And yes a good charged battery will run a points ignition for most of the day on the battery alone.

If you have a newer system with a computer you will have about an hours worth of run time until the voltage drops below 10.4 or so, that is when the computer will stop working. Add to that an electric fuel pump for injectors and your dead alternator/generator run time is even shorter.