More Chinesium to avoid

[groily]

A mate brought round a dynamo and a newly-acquired CVC box yesterday.

The dynamo had been converted, very nicely, from three brush to two brush with rebuilt guts, and for 12v. It's a Marchal, a very good quality item of solid construction, typical continental design using 4 field coils and a centrally disposed armature. It had been wired to work in conjunction with a regulator of the 'Lucas' type, ie for live side regulation.

The gent who rebuilt it supplied a CVC box he'd acquired from a reputable French source as an RB108 etc replacement. He said it was new. Not one I'd seen before, being larger than the usual dodgy cheapos. He said the two together seemed to work nicely.

Well  . . . maybe they did, if the only test he did was to connect the dyn to the reg and see if there was a stable output with the dyn driven by an electric drill. Which there was indeed.

However, my mate then took over, to fit the bits to whatever beast it is. But first, wisely, he tested things one more time on the bench, with a battery and ammeter in circuit and the dynamo mounted on a test rig.
And lo and behold, good output, yes sir  . . . but with the battery in circuit he was disconcerted to find that the dynamo turned like a motor when the rig was stopped.

He nipped round with it for a natter, not being sure whether it was 'him' or 'it'.

A quick check of the dynamo itself showed all was well there, and a repeat test without a battery confirmed that the regulator worked after its fashion. But with a battery, same thing. Not cutting out on declining revs. So it was 'it', not 'him'.

Classic malfunction. Which, had the bits been fitted with the dynamo drive in place, could have been very expensive and smoky/smelly.

The only position of the adjuster screw in which the thing would cut-IN was the one it had been set to; so much as an 1/8th of a turn either way stopped it working at all; and there was simply NO position in which the cut-out would open as revs dropped - until the battery was disconnected.

So the tabs on the box were bent back and the guts extracted and examined. Talk about shoddy. Extensive further efforts to find any setting where the cut-out would operate properly also failed. The alignment of the various sets of points and of pretty well everything inside was terrible. Not worth bothering with for another milli-second.

This unit is a first cousin of the smaller replica Chinese boxes available everywhere, which in my experience have been equally awful. You gotta love the 'Quality Assured' stickers and the like . . .
DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT USING ONE!

Fortunately, I had a little-used neg earth regulator lying around. Not my fave, but a V Reg I'd taken off one of my own bikes in favour of a DVR some years ago.  It'll do for the time being I think, with a working cut out and a very stable regulating voltage.

[Sakura]

The RB108 are usually made in India and are a byword  in the trade for being useless. I doubt the Chinese would bother to manufacture a mechanical/electrical unit. Their most likely route would be electronic. Andy Tiernan just automatically replaces them with a DVR.

[a101960]

" Andy Tiernan just automatically replaces them with a DVR." If want reliability it's the only solution.

[Rex]

Replace a VReg2 with a DVR2 too.
Most of those repro regs are only good for gutting and hiding a DVR2 inside.

[groily]

Apologies to our members in Beijing for unfairly maligning them then. Whinge duly transferred to the sub-continent!

Of course, DVRs etc are the go-to, or one of - but not in France necessarily for the market and cost reasons that Chaterlea and CheezerBeesa have explained  pretty frankly in recent posts.

This was the first of these larger pieces of junk I had come across, but plenty of the smaller ones that Wassell sells or sold are already littering the place. Binned on sight, every time.

I imagine the guy that supplied this one was under cost pressure from the customer, or maybe felt it would be difficult to explain why a decent UK-made fifty quid item would cost nearly twice that locally now.
 (It would also be not unreasonable to infer that most French repairers would be more accustomed to Miller or Bosch wiring, and therefore less well-versed in the ins and outs of 'Lucas' style voltage regulators. Possibly they'd be a bit more familiar with the JG units if they've worked on Vincents and Velocettes).

I used to keep half a doz DVR2s and the odd DVR4 on hand pre-Brexit, along with a whole drawful of armatures and field coils for all the usual Lucas instruments as well as the short and long Millers, which I'd set up to run with DVRs. But no chance any more, those days are gone - although I'll stick things together and test them for mates if they get the parts  . . .  Which is how this latest thing turned up in the shed. And as I happened to have a working neg Earth V Reg that I'd replaced on one of my own with a DVR, I gave it to him.

(The V Reg isn't so bad Rex, but a) needs a battery and b) does that 'small discharge at tickover' thing. As do most mechanical regulators.  Al Osborne isn't an eejit and the things are quite well-liked in some quarters. The JGs are what Dave Lindsley sold for best part of 20 years, and they work well too. I have one from the '80s, when they were the only electronic option to get to 12v, and it still works although it's in retirement. I use it to test 12v pos earth continental dyns with F to D field windings.)

[Rex]

He may not be a eejit but by God his customer skills need work.
I also dislike the way the AO thing sometimes forgets to "switch on" and start charging, though if you tell him that you get a tirade of abuse involving the accusation that either your dynamo is knackered or you've wired it incorrectly.
The "Matchless Clueless" site said much the same some years back.
DVR2 every time.

[Sakura]

He may not be a eejit but by God his customer skills need work.
I also dislike the way the AO thing sometimes forgets to "switch on" and start charging, though if you tell him that you get a tirade of abuse involving the accusation that either your dynamo is knackered or you've wired it incorrectly.
The "Matchless Clueless" site said much the same some years back.
DVR2 every time.

Couldn't agree more. Despite his denials they don't charge on a Vincent until you're doing over 30 with a discharge below that.

[groily]

The "Matchless Clueless" site said much the same some years back.

That's true Rex. But Dr James Smith, that site's creator, in his seriously good 'Classic Motorcycle Electrics Manual' (The Crowood Press, 2015) page 200, lists the DVR and the V reg 2 as the best choices of the various electronic units out there. With a stated preference for the DVR, just the same as you and  me and Sakura and a load of the rest of us.

I have no brief for AO Services but I like the A Reg 1 and A Reg 6 regulator/rectifiers for alternator applications, having fitted many of them. They're good value and robust.

I've never bought a V Reg, just found I had one on one of mine at acquisition  . . . and swapped it for a DVR. But - in this case it does work OK, so I'm not going to be too one-eyed about it. The guy who's getting it can replace it easily enough if he's not happy and wants to spend the necessary. Just doing him a favour really, to get him going for free.

Not sure how taken aback we should be that a machine would need more than 30mph to show a charge or balance loads? Unless in a low gear of course.
My own 650s need somewhere in the 30s (minimum snatch-free speed in top really) to balance even light loads - with DVRs. (And even DVRs can need a few rpm or a trot up the road  to cut in sometimes.)
Nothing's infallible, I'm just grateful we have a number of options frankly.

[Triton Thrasher]

l Not sure how taken aback we should be that a machine would need more than 30mph to show a charge or balance loads? Unless in a low gear of course.
My own 650s need somewhere in the 30s (minimum snatch-free speed in top really) to balance even light loads - with DVRs. (And even DVRs can need a few rpm or a trot up the road  to cut in sometimes.)

Balancing the (quite low wattage) headlight load at 30 mph in top used to be the sign that your charging system was working perfectly.  Has something changed?

Another thing the handbooks said was “keep the engine spinning freely,” which might have meant don’t chug around at 30 mph in top gear on what was supposed to be a fast 650.