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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Today's Featured Article - Identifying Tractor Noises - by Curtis Von Fange. Listening To Your Tractor : Part 3 - In this series we are continuing to learn the fine art of listening to our tractor in hopes of keeping it running longer. One particularly important facet is to hear and identify the particular noises that our
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