OT: Generac Generator Issue?

My immediate reaction is you have a bad voltmeter. Check it with a handheld unit.

Grant

George wrote:

||My immediate reaction is you have a bad voltmeter. Check it with a ||handheld unit.

...an analog multimeter Texas Parts Guy

Hmmmm..... I'll see if I can find my old one. I had one for years until I got a digital unit. I do miss it from time to time to gauge the swing.

Any thoughts about the amount of deviati>

George wrote: (clip) When I switch the generator load off via a breaker on the generator and my digital voltmeter confirms the feed is off, the needle on the built in meter does go to zero but bounces all over around zero until I turn off the generator. (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^ With the generator off, does the needle bounce around if you give the panel a hit with the heel of your hand? It sounds like it may have lost its damping. If that's all it is I would just pretent it's not happening.

Probably. Does a 120V incandescent light bulb run nice and steady from it? The light output from incandescent lamps is quite sensitive to voltage (as you can see when they flicker when a motor starts).

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Simpson meters are the *best*. Mine gets more use than the DVM at home.

Jim

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I can't believe I found my old analog meter! The voltage varies but stays right around 130 and when the engine coughs/runs rough at all, it dips around 128 and then surges around 131 and comes back down around 130.

At this point, I'm betting it's just the gauge on the generator. Would people tend to agree?

--George

I just walked out and rapped the meter - it does bounce with a firm whack. If I push and pull the generator, the needle bounces.

I'll live with it until I run >

I plugged in a 100 watt incandescent work light and it's both bright and solid.

I th>

ABSOLUTELY ! Can you say 260? :-) ...lew...

I have two, a good one, and one that I let out of the house to do vehicle stuff. It's been dropped and re-built a few times over the years. I've actually gotten pretty good at repairing those dArsonval movements. And cutting new glass, and re-winding the shunts, and swapping out cracked cases, and wiring up new pinjack leads, etc etc etc...

Jim

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I just snagged one of the late model 260s with the nylon shell at a Goodwill for....$5

Gunner

"A vote for Kerry is a de facto vote for bin Laden." Strider

Now *that*s a gloat. The nylon cases are a lot stronger and stand up to terrific abuse. Also the ones of that vintage typically have the larger cartridge fuse in them which makes them a bit safer if you use the meter to measure powerline voltages.

And by the way, don't use those meters to measure powerline voltages....

Jim

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Jim, can you explain this further? I don't understand this part of your post. Thanks

Jim Kovar Vulcan, Mi

OK, the deal is that simpson meters (and the like, such as triplett, etc) are poor devices for testing live circuits especially in panel boards.

The older ones are especially bad.

The failure mode involves accidentally measuring a live circuit with the meter in ohms or mA range. Large fault currents can then flow inside the meter with explosive results. The oldest simpson meters had no fuse in any of the test lead connections, and the second generation ones had only a small 3AG buss fuse.

The smaller fuses were unable to interrupt the large fault currents and would continue conducting when the interior of the fuse became filled with plasma. The third generation of Simpson meter put a large energy limiting cartridge fuse in series with the smaller buss fuse.

However given the availability of wiggler type voltage testers which are purpose built for testing power line voltages, I have stopped my former practice of checking in panelboards with my analog meters. I went and bought an inexpensive wiggler tester.

The trouble becomes less and less when the fault currents that can flow are small. So testing inside an electronics chassis presents no trouble, but probing the incoming service for a house inside the panel is a bad idea.

Jim

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Jim sez: "I've actually gotten pretty good at repairing those

OK. Now here's a test question: Have you gotten good enough to rebalance the Simpson movement via the little weights on the "cross" without ruining the bearings in the process? If your "success/ruin" ratio is better than

2:1 you may advance to the head of Robert's distinguished meter repairman class.

Bob (analog is great if you ignore the parallax of the mind) Swinney

My own favorite purely passive multimeter was the Tripplett which added a slide-switch below the rotary which would double the sensitivity on each range, thus increasing the odds for the reading to be somewhere above mid-scale (and thus usually more accurate).

The one which I still have (and don't use anymore, because of the number of batteries required, and because the reference part really is better with mercury cells (now made of unobtanium), was the FETVM.

For almost everything I use the Fluke DVM, either the 27 (bright yellow handheld with o-ring gaskets to keep water out), or the work-alike which is a bench-top type, with a compartment in it for the test leads, and a nice handle for carrying it all at once.

For tuning things for peaks or nulls, it has a bar-graph simulation of the needle. It is auto-ranging, so I don't have to take the probe off of the test point to switch the range,and then re-find it. It will trap min and max readings, it will beep when it has acquired a new reading, so you can take the probe clear and turn your head to read it. The autoranging is a problem when checking capacitors, so you can lock it to a given range, if you so desire. The continuity mode puts a known current through the device under test, displays the voltage across it (nice for identifying silicon vs germanium semiconductor devices. It beeps steadily for a low-resistance connection, or issues a short beep for a single junction forward drop, so you often don't have to look at it at all. (The beep is why I move to the 27 from the 77, as the 77 had too high a frequency beep, and I had to ask my wife to repeat the beep so I could test continuity.

Also -- both of these DVMs have an amazingly long operation from a single 9V alkaline battery.

The only place where a real needle is nice is when tuning to a really precise peak -- or when monitoring something which is frequently changing -- e.g. a VU meter, though the bargraph LEDs work quite well for this as well.

Of course, when I want a lot more resolution, there is the rack-mount HP 3455A, which includes four-wire measurement of resistance, the only way to measure it and to be sure that the test lead resistance and contact resistance are not contributing to the measurement's errors.

Enjoy, DoN.