[AT] Charging batteries

Tue Mar 12 13:03:23 PDT 2019

I'll just start down through here...  :-)
Our antique  charger may have been made in the 1920's. It had I think two
big knobs on the front and an ammeter. The innards looked pretty simple. No
motor. I think one knob was volts / charging rate and the other was number
of batteries being charged. Either 3, 6 or 12 as I recall. It would not
charge a 12 volt battery. It used a "light bulb" ballast in it but vacuum
tube may have described it better than light bulb. I think it had a
Fahnestock clip on the top of the bulb. The last place I ever saw where you
could buy one of those ballast bulbs was from
www.natauto.com

About that Allis C... Sometimes things are not what they seem on the
surface. I often had it charging but it was prone to lose ground at the
goofy starter anchor set-screw. I finally decided that the "real" problem
is the non obvious one. That is that when the battery does not want to turn
it over that doesn't always mean the battery is really that low. In the
case of this Allis C I think most of the problem is in the starter. It has
been serviced several times over the years and "seems" to work OK but its
amp draw is so heavy that I think it sucks so much out of even a new 6 volt
battery that it starves the ignition circuit so much that it fires poorly
when cranking. Since spark is weak while cranking it needs to crank longer
to start and the more it cranks the more it has left. It's a vicious
circle. I should mention too that this C has oversized pistons and an
increased compression ratio. That piston and sleeve set was supposed to
give it about 30+ HP
That starter really spins on 12 volts and I think given this tractors
history and the way I use it I think I am going with a one wire 12 volt
alternator and save the old parts.

Dean: unless I am mistaken I believe that you have to make the generator
pulley smaller to speed it up???

In the old days we didn't have these "jumper packs" and I'm guilty of
always keeping one handy in the truck.  :-)

.

On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 3:02 PM Brian VanDragt <bvandragt at comcast.net>
wrote:

> I thought I read somewhere that generators have an optimum speed where
> they charge the most, and going faster than that doesn't help, it actually
> decreases output.  The strange part was that the optimum speed is actually
> slower than a tractor's full engine speed, so the generator charges the
> best at less than full engine speed.  Maybe I'll think of where I saw that.
>
> Brian
>
> On March 12, 2019 at 2:22 PM Dean VP <deanvp at att.net> wrote:
>
>
> Has anyone simply changed the diameter of the generator belt pulley to
> increase RPM's of the generator?  If so did it help?
>
> On Tuesday, March 12, 2019, 8:00:18 AM MST, Ralph Goff <alfg at sasktel.net>
> wrote:
>
>
> On 3/12/2019 7:56 AM, Ron Cook wrote:
>
>
>
> I have never been around an Allis Chalmers or Ford 6-volt tractor that the
> electrical system performed correctly.  International Harvester and John
> Deere are the only other brands I have any experience with.  I currently
> have both of those I use and have no problems at all.  I do not have an IH
> M, but I remember they were marginal on cranking.  6 volt obviously not
> enough.  Same with John Deere A.  12-volt fixes both of them.  6 volt
> simply was marginal to begin with.  As far as charging,  I am of the
> opinion it has to do with the generator's rpm and in the case of the Ford,
> a cheap low output generator.  10 amp generator would take all day at full
> speed to charge the battery back up and I doubt anything other than brand
> new would put out anywhere close to 10.  Doing chores and such just won't
> do it.
>
> I still run the Cockshutt 40 on 6 volts although I've got a bigger than
> original battery on it. My brother fixed the starter problem years ago by
> switching the body of another starter from a
>
> Massey combine onto the Cockshutt. It really improved the cranking speed.
> If everything is working right they don't need a lot of cranking to start
> anyway. You've likely seen the videos
>
> of starting my 40 on some pretty severe cold days on 6 volts.  I've seen a
> guy start a FArmall M , about two turns of the starter and it was running.
> I was amazed.
>
> On the other hand I've got a Case DC4 that is impossible to start on 6
> volts. Or even 12.
>
> Ralph in Sask.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
-- 

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com
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