[AT] Charging batteries

Tue Mar 12 19:18:42 PDT 2019

You folks may remember the trouble I had with my John Deere 430V. Wouldn’t ever really charge, was hard to get the starter to turn it over.

So I took the starter to a local shop, who said the starter was on it’s last leg. New brushes, commutator turning, bushings, etc. I put it it in and the symptom didn’t really change - still could be slow to spin the engine.   If you could get it spinning it would start, but it just would barely “lump” over at times.

While scratching my head on that, I moved to the generator that wasn’t charging. I took it to the local shop, and they said the generator was fine but the voltage regulator was badly out of adjustment. I installed them, and the charging problem went away. But the starting problem remained. That’s when I looked at the battery cables and saw that the “6 V cables“ that I bought when I got the engine freed were only two gauge. So I had custom double zero cables made up and the problem is gone. Starts on the second revolution every time.  Assuming I don’t honk up the choke. (-;

Farmer’s mantra maybe “check the grounds”, but my mantra is check the cable gauge...

Spencer Yost

> On Mar 12, 2019, at 9:58 PM, Dean VP <deanvp at att.net> wrote:
> 
> Yes reducing the pulley diameter will speed up the armature. Increasing the speed probably isn't needed at full throttle but many tractors are run at less than full throttle much of the time and that increased armature speed might duplicate normal full throttle charging.    Yes the whole charging system can be perfect but if you have too hungry of a starter it negates everything at 6V.   I was away from farm machinery for 40 years so i had to relearn almost everything but I distinctly remember having a tractor that wouldn't start as long as i was hitting the starter but as soon as i let go of the starter  "boom" the tractor would start. The starter was drawing so much away from the battery voltage that the voltage to the points was so low it wouldn't produce enough spark to run. . Had me more than a little a little puzzled for awhile.  That can be caused by a bad starter or bad wiring or bad grounding or all of the above. We often forget when replacing battery cables on our 6V tractors that about the only battery cables sold at auto stores are for 12v and not nearly heavy enough. But I'be had starters mounted in their respective spot in the bell housing and not make adequate ground to the engine frame. Then you get into garden tractors and the engine frame is isolated from chassis ground and one can get all messed up with a poor engine to chassis ground cable. My tendency is to try to find the problem by taking shortcuts, which most of the time doesn't work, after failing then I start doing it methodically one step at a time. Believe it or not I have had better luck using a volt meter across a connection during cranking to isolate a problem rather than using an ohmmeter to try to find a high resistance connection.  Sand paper and emery cloth are my friends. .But then there is one tractor that I have owned for 20 years who's generator still doesn't work right.  I work on it in spurts when i have some time. I never seem to find the real problem. Then I lose patience and move on to something else. The battery stays charged enough and I just keep the battery on a trickle charge.when stored.   One of these days i'm going to get a real round tuit and fix that sucker right.  it probably will be something simple and very embarrassing. .
> 
> 
> On Tuesday, March 12, 2019, 1:04:09 PM MST, Indiana Robinson <robinson46176 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 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
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> Central Indiana USA
> robinson46176 at gmail.com
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