Farmall H 12v Conversion From Generator to Alternator

after i got this thing fired up the other day i think i'd made the comment that i was going to rip out all the electric and all that stuff and go ahead and put a 12-volt uh blenmar alternator on this guy here whenever i got to double checking i got to look around and i saw where the original owner had done some some disconnecting as well one of the things he disconnected was this wire right here which is leaving the cut out all right now cutout is it's one of the one of the variations of the voltage control that they had on the on the old generators now some of them had the voltage regulator and then others just had nothing more than a cutout the generator once it starts generating would essentially run wild if you didn't have some kind of a torque control on it so they incorporate in the light switch a little resistor and different ways of charging by different positions of the light switch you could pull your light switch out the first the first click and it would turn your lights on pulled out the second click and it might give you a low charging rate which would cause the cutout to once it gets to a certain level it would cut out and stop generating or you could pull the light switch out to the third setting and it would allow the generator to put out more uh amperage before the cutout cuts out the cutout is no more than a nothing more than a current relay a current relay is just a coil or a an iron core with a coil of wire wrapped around it and whenever you run voltage through it that'll induce an electromagnetic magnetic force that will draw your contact closed you cut that power off and it would open up the resistor in the light switch is what caused this to cycle up and down as far as i know well i got to checking i found out that this wire here the previous owner had disconnected as well as this one here and i haven't found out what this one does yet but i went ahead and checked this and guess what i've got like 19.2 volts output on my generator okay so what i'm going to do and talking to my brother he was telling me that well go ahead and check see if this is a three brush generator some of them had a third brush and it was adjustable typically the third brush alternator was used with in conjunction with the cutout a regular standard alternator as i understand would work with a voltage regulator so what we're going to be able to do i hope is undo this screw right here and that's going to allow that movable brush in there to rotate just a little bit and i should be able to decrease my output voltage right here from 19.2 down around 14.6 to charge the battery then we've got to reattach this and we have to make sure that the the the resistor in the light switch will control the output so we don't boil our battery dry with no control on the output you will literally boil your battery dryer it seemed seems like to me to move that third brush i think the motor should be uh not running too much stuff can happen in there okay here's the thing i had to take it off of the tractor this is the screw that we need to loosen up right here you have to figure out which one of these is the movable the movable brush and it happens to be this one right here that's fairly much in line with it and if you see i can slide it this way i can slide it that way all right and it's changing the position that the brush comes in contact with the um the armature so what i'm gonna do started out with it right about there and i had 19.2 volts i'm going to roll it back this way because logic tells me if we cut the distance between the second and third one that should reduce the output however i don't know if it's going to reduce amperage output or voltage output so the only thing i can do in trying to figure this out is adjust it back i know where it was where it started 19.2 adjust it here and see if i get a voltage output difference if so we're good to go if not back to the drawing board well it it's too hard to actually get all the adjustment stuff in there on video if you have just you're going to have to take my word for it i loosened that up i moved the third brush all the way one direction to to affect a great change in output if in fact it's going to make a change and it made no change in voltage output i don't know what it did to the amperage don't have an ammeter hooked up and we don't have any load anyway then i went ahead shut it back off and then adjust it all the way the other direction as far as it would go and fire back up virtually no change i still have 20.4 19.2 whatever on a digital meter i don't get any change in it at all now this being a three brush generator is more than likely designed to be operated with a cutout and not an external voltage regulator chances are this is going to be a generator somebody can purchase that they'd like i know it's got output i just can't control it and i'm not a bit smarter than it was a minute ago hey you know you win a few you lose a few man so i'm just going to bypass that step and do like i should have done to begin with is go ahead and eliminate that and put on a one more alternator these smaller internationals this little h that generator is completely held up underneath that that sheet metal enclosure and it's a of a certain diameter they're pretty much all about the same set about same diameter as a starter you know but you can't use a a standard delco 10s i frame or 12 si frame or that 3125 or whatever it was i put on that master harris so because the diameter is so large some guys will just go and take a sawzall or a torch and cut outside the sheet metal just looks like the devil and you can't drop it down to tighten up the belt because of all this casting here here's your distributor drive casting and then your oil fill and all that stuff so you're somewhat limited so you want to get a small diameter and what i've come up with is i come up with another another one wire a very small diameter duralast alternator it's internally uh internally regulated and self-excited and it's of a diameter it's actually smaller physically smaller than the the alt the generator that's on there so i'm going to adapt this bracket put a new belt on and mount it right up here and it's not going to interfere with the sheet metal so that's the task in the for what it's worth department this is a a model d dl delta lima george i don't think that's right 1 2 1 8 0-s-e-n s-e-n means it's a self-self-exciting alternator 12-volt and then there's the the actual number of it it's also got a tech support line you can contact them it's got a couple of extra terminals on the back and there was nothing marked on the paperwork or on the alternator so i actually called tech support and found out that's for automotive use one of them gets out of partial partial output voltage that you're supposed to be able to use certain types of relays and other types of electronics on the vehicle and then the other one gives a full full voltage but it's a 4m maximum load so all we're concerned about is the battery terminal right here to the positive side of the battery and we're going to negatively ground this machine too so what i did i took some scrap metal put some slots into some horizontal slots and some vertical slots i'm going to weld them together like such that's going to allow left and right movement and up and down movement and once i get these welded in place then i'll go ahead and trim these ends off whatever's necessary if you notice that's at an angle that's at an angle that's going to allow it to hopefully pull and pull upwards as it adjusts for belt but belt length belt length and tension that's what the plan is so i'm going to go ahead and weld those guys up nice plum and square and we'll move on [Music] [Music] okay so here's the final bracket i've adapted that very first one that i started off with simply because it just worked out much more convenient this way as you can see i still have the slots those slots are going to work just like i said it's going to slide back and forth for that adjustment and then we can we've got this slot here on the end for being able to raise it up and down all right uh you wonder probably why it's out of such a thick material well two reasons first that's uh what i had in stock over there in the scrap pile and secondly i kind of suspected that i might be able to get by with a one bolt mount and to make sure that i could i decided to go ahead and make it out of this half inch scrap material instead of a more flimsy or easier to work with quarter inch material which might give a little bit of flex whenever the belt tension is on combine that with the fact that this alternator i don't know the weight on it you can see as compared to the physical size of my fist this alternator is only about three and three quarter inches in diameter and i don't think it tops the scale over five and a half pounds so i think one bolt mount with the uh with the tensioning bracket will be just fine it's gonna go right here at any rate as long as the welds don't break i think it's going to i think it's going to work just fine so that's the way she looks here it is completely installed here's the new bracket you can see the slots are a little bit too long you know but i didn't have anything to really go by i could have made those slots only a half an inch long and done it and then take an inch and a half off of this but it doesn't matter but that's nice and substantial it's a good half inch thick scrap material one bolt mount as you can see up on top the original tightening strap or adjustment strap that held the original generator fit perfectly i just had to make a little bit of a notch with the grinder to compensate for a rib on the back side of this alternator if you take a look at this alternator it's a nice neat little guys i think it's 63 amp i'm not sure and it's almost exactly four inches it's roughly three and seven eighths inch in diameter by roughly four and a half inches in length so uh it's actually a pretty nice neat little alternator so now i'm going to rip all the wiring out hook up my one battery post right here and we're good to go so there's the completed bracket uh in retrospect i should have made this an inch shorter but you know no big deal it's not a big deal i was able to use the the bracket that was on here with the original generator and all i had to do is put this in the little milling machine and cut a slot there because i didn't have any idea how much it had to adjust it was a good thing i did too because i did definitely move it about a quarter of an inch back off of the actual opening and if you see right here there's a rib in that uh well it's a big swole up spot in the case just exactly like this right here that was interfering with it so instead of heating this up and bending it into an arch i just went ahead and cut that out with the milling machine and just let it set down and i got about 3 16 inch clearance there but there it is the belt is all nice and tight there's no slippage on the belt the alignment is is near perfect on the belt there's no problem i've got good tension on it not so much tension it's gonna be bad on the bearing you know this little alternator and we're recessed in behind where that sheet metal is going to be so now we're going to fire this puppy up and see what happens we're going to start off with the digital voltmeter sitting right here on the battery showing us static battery voltage and like i was telling you the cool thing about having the voltmeter that i've got installed on the dash is that if your battery is weakened in the winter time or sometime later as the battery gets older it's going to show you what that battery voltage is and let you know you need to put it on a charger before you ever try to start an old tractor and guess what that's what happens when you forget to turn the gas on but that's okay it's all in a day's work in it well that pretty much wraps up the 12-volt conversion on this 1945 international h got a 1940 h that's right in right in the wings right behind it just got it running just the other day too a couple things that not real i'm not real happy about i'm not real happy with the resolution on this particular volt meter i got one identical to it put on that massive hair is 30 and it reads fairly close it's a you know a half a volt or so under what the voltage is but this one here whenever my digital meter is reading 14.6 volts i'm still just showing about 13 and a half volts on that meter that's a that's a full volt i don't like that but at least you can still tell that there's output and that is charging but at any rate this thing here is pretty much wrapped up i'm kind of tickled with that little alternator over there i think we're pretty much ready to go i am going to be using it with the temporary tank and of course the battery is reasonably close to permanent now may have to re-route a couple wires you know but nothing's in the way of anything everything's going to be nice and secured and like i said in wire loomed with all the small wires we should be okay this has been kind of fun i think we beat this from death this trackman 44 and i am out of here

Channel: Tractorman44

Views: 6,623

Keywords: 12v generator, 12v alternator, three brush generator, two brush generator, one wire alternator, self exciting alternator, internally regulated alternator, farmall H, 12v conversion, alternator bracket, mig welding, how to mount alternator, how to convert to 12v, How to tractor 12v conversion, diy 12v conversion, diy alternator bracket

Id: 3d0MwyW81Bc

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 09 2020