Alternator troubles

[JF in MI]

Our airport lawn mowing tractor is a Ford 5000 diesel which works reasonably well and has the necessary PTO power to run our 15? bat wing mower. The battle I?ve been fighting with it is past ?Bubba? repairs. It had a Delco CS-130 one wire alternator on it. Don?t know if this was done before we got it or after and before I started working on it when I moved on site. It used to have a tach drive generator which was replaced (presumably because it died) and the CS-130 replacement had no drive so thus no more tach. Also no indicator light ?cause of the ?one wire? arrangement. I had added a tach drive to it since the rear bearing on them is open. One day I?m mowing with it and wondering why it is using so much fuel then also noticed it kept running cooler (by both gauges). Turns out the alternator died but there was no way to know without a light and the battery was down to just a few volts. These machines are expensive to replace so I feel if they are to be repaired they should be done correctly rather than half-a$$ed. Had to replace the shorted stator but also put in a standard voltage regulator so now the indicator light works along with charging at idle. This was my fun for the day.

 

[Steve@Advance]

Always good to fix something right!

To take it one step further, add a volt meter.

The charge light is not fool proof, there can be other failures that will prevent the charge light from working.

 

[Gambles]

It's always nice to get rid of a hack and put it back to where it should be. I'm with Steve on this one. Put a voltmeter on it. If I had to choose, I'd rather have a voltmeter instead of an amp meter.

 

[JF in MI]

A volt meter would be nice but the 'idiot' light is there for a reason; when I got there I found that the power steering was barely working and everyone thought it was normal (pressure control valve in the pump was jammed with debris). And no one seemed to notice that it was only running on 3 cylinders (bad injector).