Technical Car generator output

The generator on my 59 Pontiac starcheif went out Saturday night... Or so I think... Anybody know what the average output should be????

 

generators generally put out about 20 to 40 amps. More than enough as long as your not powering a super computer on wheels. -Dave

 

Close to zero at idle if I remember correctly.

 

Yep. -Dave

 

All of the above.

 

Anyone know Voltage as I only have a 10amp multimeter

 

Quick test, take off fan belt and connect jumper cables to your battery. Take the wires off the generator terminals then touch the negative jumper to the generator case and the positive jumper cable to the wiring post. If it runs like a motor the generator is OK. The problem is with the regulator.

 

Two tests:

Voltmeter on the fully charged battery, run the engine at driving speeds, volts need to be 14-ish. If it is reading only 12 or 12.5 at this higher rpm, it is not charging.

Test the generator; disconnect the wires at gen. Put the red voltmeter lead to the BATT post on gen. Then black lead of voltmeter to ground.

get a jumper wire. What you will be jumping when it is running, is jump from a good ground to the FLD post on generator when the motor is revved to normal driving speed. ONLY ground that barely long enough to read the voltmeter....it should run wild with twice or triple the normal 12 volts. On my old analog meter that only goes to 20 volts, a working generator will instantly pin the gauge needle...so don't ground it for longer than a couple secs. A bad gen might show only 2 or 3 volts if that.

if that looks OK, clean wires at reg if rusty, and if you like tinkering, you could file the points in the reg, or just try a new reg.