During the last round of power outages my generator got a good work-out. Since it didn't already have one I decided to install an hour-meter. I figured the simplest place would be across the 12 volt dc output. When I tried it wouldn't work, so I put the volt meter on the output and got zero. Popping the panel out I started working backwards and found that I had voltage on the other side of the circuit breaker, but it was only 8.1 volts. The circuit breaker is supposed to be a self resetting kind so I guess it might have failed. Shouldn't be too hard to find another 12 volt 10 amp breaker to replace it with.
With the hour meter hooked up to the other side of the breaker (which is where the schematic shows it anyway) it worked just fine.
But..... doesn't 8.1 volts seem low? Or is there something weird about outputs on generators? The schematic shows a rectifier so its probably the crudest square wave. I seem to remember reading somewhere that this was an unregulated output and should only be used to charge batteries. I'm assuming its doing that properly because in over 50 hours of use it always cranked over (its electric start) and just like a car if it wasn't charging the battery as it ran it would eventually run down.
I'm just puzzled by the low reading, can anyone explain this?
With the hour meter hooked up to the other side of the breaker (which is where the schematic shows it anyway) it worked just fine.
But..... doesn't 8.1 volts seem low? Or is there something weird about outputs on generators? The schematic shows a rectifier so its probably the crudest square wave. I seem to remember reading somewhere that this was an unregulated output and should only be used to charge batteries. I'm assuming its doing that properly because in over 50 hours of use it always cranked over (its electric start) and just like a car if it wasn't charging the battery as it ran it would eventually run down.
I'm just puzzled by the low reading, can anyone explain this?