Generator Question;

As long as the regulator frame is solidly grounded, the wire doesn't do anything.

Speedy Jim

Why, thanks, Speedy, that reply was. How's the healing doing ? The group missed you. BTW. I found a trick to install the brush springs on the generator. How do you get that nasty job done?

Take some pics and a brief write-up of how you did it. We should share that info around./.

Speedy Jim

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It is for the 'sense wire,' a direct path between the dynamo and BATTERY GROUND. In some vehicles the resistance of the ground path can be high enough to cause the charging light to always be on, very dimly in most cases but a source of worry. Adding the sense wire reduces the resistance of the ground return path, causing the regulator to respond more correctly... and turning off that dim red glow :-)

-Bob Hoover

Starting in '69, VW added ground wires for almost everything, including a wire to connect the generator ground to the VR ground. This assures that the VR senses the full, correct generator output voltage and regulates accurately.

Earlier cars generally did fine without that wire, but voltage drops in the ground connections between the generator and the VR could cause problems. The ground wire here was a bit of a "belt & suspenders" approach.

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----------------------------------------------- Jim Adney snipped-for-privacy@vwtype3.org Madison, WI 53711 USA

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I know a picture is worth a thousand words but I haven't learned the "new" camera yet. It all started when the "red"light came on. sound familiar? so, I figure I can get that brush in w/o too much trouble. but alas the spring sprung ! the good news is I found it. but getting it back in proved to be difficult. So, I moved the generator to the bench where it still proved difficult. What I did was fashion a rod ground into a "D" shaped tip that got bent

90 degrees. tensioned the spring and wiggled it off the tip onto the flattened post in the generator. best done w/o the brush in there. I did polarize it all and voila. it works. I did tell a co-worker, I just put tape over the "glowing" gen. lite. Joke !

Very shortly after I got my Bug I pulled the back seat cushion up to see what was under there. When I put it back one of the seat belt buckles fell under there and shorted on the VR.

I snatched it away pretty quickly and everything seemed OK. Months later I'm cleaning the air cleaner and generally looking around and I notice a ground wire on the generator.... and it looked like it had gotten REALLY hot.

So I checked to see where it went and of course it went to the VR. Apparantly the seat belt buckle had shorted to that wire. Everything is working fine but one of these weekends I'll be replacing that wire.

when I had a beetle and found the VR under the seat , I covered all the connections with duct tape.