[AT] Charging batteries

[Brian Lesh]

Dad bought a new Allis C, one bottom plow, 2 row corn planter and 
cultivator when he got home after WWII.  Always told me he would plow 
all day with the Allis then hook onto a harrow and harrow the plowed 
ground in about half hour.  Then he bought a used Allis C. Plow with one 
and harrow with the other one I guess.  1948 he bought a DC Case.  The 2 
Allis C's got to do the cultivating then.  6 22 inch rows on one and the 
other one had a 2 row corn cultivator.  Also had a 5 ft belly mower for 
one to cut alfalfa. This was before my time but when I was growing up in 
the 60's the C's were still cultivating, mowing hay and the one would 
have duals on it in the spring to pull the harrow before planting.  The 
DC Case had a loader on it by then most of the time and the new big 
tractor was a Farmall Super M.  Anyway about the charging problem.  
Seems like we cranked them C's most of the time in the morning but after 
cultivating till noon they would usually start after lunch with the 
starter.  If  we ever killed it turning on the ends and they were hot I 
would crank it like he told me a quarter turn at a time and it would 
never start.  He would show up and tell me never do this as he would 
spin it with the crank and get it to start.  So when Dad retired the C's 
were still being used cultivating and pulling wagons but he was pretty 
tired of buying batteries so the crank got used most of the time.

> As someone who grew up during the late 1940''s and early 1950's and 
> as  kid I was watching life very closely and asking a million 
> questions. My father had many failings and we didn't always get along 
> well but I have to  give him credit for teaching me many skills and 
> always being ready to answer questions and trying to teach me anything 
> he was able to.
> The 1946 Allis Chalmers C that I own that was bought new by an 
> extremely close family friend of three generations has almost since 
> new been poor at keeping the battery charged. It was almost allways 
> used for a lot of short running jobs with a lot of starts but short 
> run times. When charging it usually only threw a couple of amps and at 
> times it just wasn't in the mood to charge at all. His son had a "lot" 
> of electrical training while in the army during WW-II and he cursed it 
> constantly.
> Now this part may be new for a lot of the younger folks but in about 
> the first half of the last century reasonably priced home battery 
> chargers were mostly just not there. For many years it was very common 
> for folks to remove the battery from their car or tractor and take it 
> to a service station and pay to have it charged. I can well recall 
> going into service stations in the early 1950's and seeing shelves 
> sitting full of batteries being charged.
> My father had a very good friend in the late 1930's who had a service 
> station in a small community about 8 miles from here. When war was 
> declared after Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the country went into 
> war production in early 1942 his friend shut down the service station 
> and both of them started working 12 hour shifts 7 days a week at 
> Allison's in Indy. I don't know what his friend did but my father was 
> testing aircraft engines. Since he was making very good money he 
> bought a lot of the tools and equipment out of the service station 
> from his friend. One of those items was a large battery charger 
> capable of charging 12 batteries at a time.
> On another tractor note, that was the same time that he bought his new 
> 1941 9N and a batch of farm equipment.
> Back to the Allis C, the family friend kept the C in a tiny shed and 
> his son ran an electric line out to it. Then he built a 6 volt charger 
> from a junk yard auto generator, a matching voltage regulator and a 
> smallish electric motor to drive the generator. I recall being really 
> impressed as a kid the first time I saw it running. Then again in 
> those days I was impressed by about anything with moving parts that 
> made noise.  :-)
> That Allis still has major rounds of depression when It doesn't want 
> to charge... We replaced the generator with a rebuilt one from TSC and 
> replaced the cut-out with a conversion kit that used a conventional 
> voltage regulator and did away with the original light / charge rate 
> switch and all wiring replaced. I can assure you that I have checked 
> the grounds, checked the grounds, checked the grounds until I am blue 
> in the face but it still lacks reliability. I think that I will break 
> with my normal approach and convert it to 12 volts and a smallish 
> alternator. I'll just keep all of the original stuff in a box on a 
> shelf up in the loft. Over the years I have usually just used the 
> crank to start it if it was weak but the family friend was elderly, 
> very slightly built and in poor health and that tractor does crank 
> kind if hard. He just couldn't crank start it.
>
>
> .
>
>
> -- 
> -- 
>
> Francis Robinson
> aka "farmer"
> Central Indiana USA
> robinson46176 at gmail.com <mailto:robinson46176 at gmail.com>
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