002 voltage issue

[Rapracing]

It had been a couple months since starting the 002 so I did earlier this evening. I started putting a load on it and up to 15-20% all seemed fine. At 25 the voltage had dropped slightly. At 40-45 it had dropped to 230. At 65 it was down to about 222. HZ remained constant at 61-61.5.

This was on the inboard meter as well kill a watt.

It it is about a ten ft run into a 50 amp RV plug and about 2ft through a wall that feeds the garage and barn.

Where re should I start looking?

VR board?

 

[rustystud]

That's where I would start. Probably time to buy "Triple Jim's" regulator board. I just did !

 

[Rapracing]

I have one of them sitting here in a box that I got a year or so back. Guess I'll switch it out and see what that does.

 

[Rapracing]

I changed the VR board and it is still dropping voltage as I add to the draw. It dropped from 120-121 per leg to 113-114 with a 40% load.

I don't recall it doing that before but maybe I didn't pay enough attention.

Where to from here?

Thanks

ETA: For grins and giggles I turned on the 3500 watt dryer to see what it did. There was just that and a couple of lights on in the house. Incoming voltage dropped to 85 on the Kill a Watt.

I also started the 003. It was at 120.2 volts on the aux plugs. I put a 450watt smoker on 1 plug and a 1000watt heater on the other. It is not connected to the house so nothing was on the main breaker. Voltage dropped on it as well to 117.3 with those two things. It appears that both are doing the same thing?

 

[DieselAddict]

Could you verify that the voltage is really changing that much with a voltmeter?

 

[jamawieb]

I changed the VR board and it is still dropping voltage as I add to the draw. It dropped from 120-121 per leg to 113-114 with a 40% load.

I don't recall it doing that before but maybe I didn't pay enough attention.

Where to from here?

Thanks

ETA: For grins and giggles I turned on the 3500 watt dryer to see what it did. There was just that and a couple of lights on in the house. Incoming voltage dropped to 85 on the Kill a Watt.

I also started the 003. It was at 120.2 volts on the aux plugs. I put a 450watt smoker on 1 plug and a 1000watt heater on the other. It is not connected to the house so nothing was on the main breaker. Voltage dropped on it as well to 117.3 with those two things. It appears that both are doing the same thing?

Verify with something other than the kill o watt meter. I use them too and I had one that went bad, starting reading voltage at 150+. I changed the voltage regulator with a known good one, still read 150 volts. Used a volt meter and it was 120, wasted a bunch of time changing voltage regulators when the original was perfect. I also just had one that read the hertz perfect, then when I put a load on the generator, the hertz crawled to 70 hertz. Same thing, kill o watt meter was bad.

 

[Triple Jim]

I also started the 003. It was at 120.2 volts on the aux plugs. I put a 450watt smoker on 1 plug and a 1000watt heater on the other. It is not connected to the house so nothing was on the main breaker. Voltage dropped on it as well to 117.3 with those two things. It appears that both are doing the same thing?

I don't think it's unusual to drop 2.7 volts at the convenience outlet what a 1450W load. The wiring to that outlet is not very big on my 003A.

 

[Rapracing]

Could you verify that the voltage is really changing that much with a voltmeter?

Yes I did that. Meter on the machines, kill a watt and volt meter all indicate the same thing

 

[Rapracing]

I don't think it's unusual to drop 2.7 volts at the convenience outlet what a 1450W load. The wiring to that outlet is not very big on my 003A.

The drop with the 3500 watt dryer and a couple of lights was on 100 amp wire about 100ft in length to my house from the lugs. That pulled all the way down to 85 volts. The way it is setup I use that same wire to power the garage through a transfer switch. I have no problems running power that direction. I have a 8hp compressor and welder that both run fine off of grid. If I just power the garage from the generator it pulls to about 90 volts with the compressor

 

[Triple Jim]

Excessive voltage sag, assuming a good regulator, would mean the regulator has done all it can, meaning it's not putting out any control current to CVT1, but the generator still isn't able to put out enough current. This could mean that you have a bad diode on the diode board that supplies exciter field current, so there isn't enough current available. The diode board is located in the box under the output lugs.

As a test, you could remove the wire from terminal 17 of the regulator and tape the connector. Then run the generator with a load that doesn't mind the extra high voltage, and see if it still pulls the generator output down. If my guess above is right, you'll still pull it down to 85v.

 

[sewerzuk]

Just a thought; I found a bad voltage selector switch on a set that wandered into my shop. One of the contacts was bad/high resistance so whenever a big load was placed on it voltage would droop. A bad contact in the main breaker would cause the same problem.
You could fully load your set and take voltages both before and after the selector switch and main breaker.

 

[Rapracing]

Excessive voltage sag, assuming a good regulator, would mean the regulator has done all it can, meaning it's not putting out any control current to CVT1, but the generator still isn't able to put out enough current. This could mean that you have a bad diode on the diode board that supplies exciter field current, so there isn't enough current available. The diode board is located in the box under the output lugs.

As a test, you could remove the wire from terminal 17 of the regulator and tape the connector. Then run the generator with a load that doesn't mind the extra high voltage, and see if it still pulls the generator output down. If my guess above is right, you'll still pull it down to 85v.

The board in it now is the one I purchased from you a year or so ago. Back then I thought the board was bad but it turned out to be the diodes on the board I think you are talking about. It has 6 diodes?

 

[rustystud]

The board in it now is the one I purchased from you a year or so ago. Back then I thought the board was bad but it turned out to be the diodes on the board I think you are talking about. It has 6 diodes?[/QU

Yes, that's the one. What I think Jim is getting at is your field current is somehow failing. Somewhere your loosing the voltage that is suppose to power the field current. Your regulator is not the problem so that means either your diodes have gone bad or you could have some bad wires or like Sewerzuk said your voltage switch is bad or the main breaker is corroded . You need to start from the regulator and back track to the generator to find what has failed. Could be something as simple as a loose wire.

 

[Rapracing]

The board in it now is the one I purchased from you a year or so ago. Back then I thought the board was bad but it turned out to be the diodes on the board I think you are talking about. It has 6 diodes?[/QU

Yes, that's the one. What I think Jim is getting at is your field current is somehow failing. Somewhere your loosing the voltage that is suppose to power the field current. Your regulator is not the problem so that means either your diodes have gone bad or you could have some bad wires or like Sewerzuk said your voltage switch is bad or the main breaker is corroded . You need to start from the regulator and back track to the generator to find what has failed. Could be something as simple as a loose wire.

I hope that's not over my head

 

[rustystud]

I hope that's not over my head

Just start at the regulator board and trace back the wiring to the distribution box. You should find something bad along the way. Your circuit diagrams will help a lot letting you know where your at.

 

[DieselAddict]

I suspect you will find the problem in the exciter circuit and the lower probability is a bad contact on the power side. If you had enough resistance in a contact to drop the voltage to 80 something it would catch fire pretty quickly.

I agree that concentrating on the exciter circuit is where to spend your time first. With any luck its just a bad diode.