The others’ comments summarize the situation pretty well: Those old 6 volt, 3-brush generators simply weren’t designed to charge at idle. So a modest discharge at idle (and at RPMs a bit above idle...) is perfectly normal.
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As JimN points out in his post, the situation can be helped by installing a smaller pulley on the generator to spin it faster. However it is not without potential problems:
1 – Driving the generator faster wears out the brushes/commutator proportionally faster.
2 – The 3-brush generator design is not very energy efficient. Ie. a significant fraction of the shaft energy going into the generator is wasted as heat in the windings. Spinning the generator faster creates more heat inside the generator. And a hotter generator = shorter generator life!
3 – Overspinning the generator increases the risk of destroying (“birdnesting”) the armature should the engine ever overspeed due to governor failure, rolling down a hill too fast, etc.
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