Rebuilding the Generator

One of the next things we decided to do was to rebuild the generator. I ordered the rebuild kit with all of the others. The great thing about these kits is that they do not come with instructions. So for the operation to be successful the three of us must combine an examination of the parts from the part to be rebuilt and the bag of new parts, to see what similarities exist between old and new parts. Then the exchange is made...and then...hope the car doesn't explode when we try to start it.

The generator rebuild kit seemed simple enough. I was composed of two new brushes and two new bearings.


And although the generator appeared buried in rust, it was easy enough to remove.



Any kind of model number has long since faded away. But it was out, and that was good.


The brushes are held in place by a spring loaded arm that presses them against the copper coils of the doo-hickey that spins in the middle of the generator. Those were easily replaced once we figured out that the metal sleeve around the generator needed to be on to affix them to those arms.


But to replace the bearings was another story. The face plates needed to be removed. To do that we needed to get the pin that held the pulley on off of the shaft in the front.

On other cars, the pin just sits in the slot. We used a vice, vice grips, liquid wrench, a hammer and an F-16 air strike to try to get the pin out. The pin actually started to have small chips begin to come out of it, so we cried, "uncle."


Fortunately, the generator has little holes covered by latched that allow someone to drop "8 or 9 drops of oil" down these holes so that the bearing could be lubricated. So we just oiled the old bearings and that was the best we could do.

This last week I continued to shed the pickle of its green coat. And look for a new green with which to replace it.