mep-802a -- brought back to life!

[zarathustra]

I picked up some 802a's from Crane, Indiana in a recent auction. They all were missing a lot of parts and had some cut wires..

After some concentrated effort, I fired up one of them today (47 hrs) and it made electricity!!

So I sat there and basked in the heat of the day for around an hour or so whilst my 48 inch fan was keeping me cool in the sun -- powered by the 802a of course. I ran it up to 49 hours with no problems and no issues at all.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that many of the Crane 802a's had new generator heads on them.

 

[hcso2332]

Good deal. I almost bought a couple of those units but they looked pretty rough although not bad the the ones upcoming in GA.

 

[Crabbie]

Glad you got one going. Do you plan on parting any of the Crane gensets out?

I have an 802 I am working on (fried diodes in the AV1 quad winding circuit), it did not have the fuse upgrade on the regulator The genset makes 60 HZ but only 25V. I hope the parts I got from Mike in Indiana fix my genset's issues, I am waiting on a fuse and fuse holder before I fire it up with the new regulator. I ordered new diodes and will replace those in the old regulator to keep as a spare.

 

[zarathustra]

I'll be parting out two of the 802a's that I have. I believe that both have good generator heads; one has a bad engine, and the other is just old. That will still leave me a couple more to get going. I started on another one today..

I also have some parts on hand that I got from an 802a that I dismantled earlier this year.

When removing the diodes they will come out in two assemblies; and F+ and an F-. They look the same but they are electrical opposites. Be sure to clearly mark the wires as you take it apart. Once apart the wires all look the same ----

I'd also check out the stator/rotor for shorts and opens before I went though all that work. When the generator has a "trauma" that will take out the diodes, there is a good(?) chance that the rotor or stator may have developed a problem. To do this properly you'll need to disconnect all the wires coming from the generator on TB1. Mark the wires as they come off; it'll save you a lot of time in re-connecting.

It only takes an ohmmeter to do the tests -- the manual has a really good section on this... A simple continuity tester will NOT do the job -- 'cause you'll be measuring ohms.

It may sound complicated, but it really is quite easy to do --- if you get stuck, contact me and I can walk you through it..


good luck


z

 

[zarathustra]

Uhh - belay that last post... If you are making electricity, even at 25 volts your rotor/stator should be OK. So, go for the diodes if they are bad, but keep an eye on the voltage regulator.

 

[Crabbie]

That is what I was thinking too, everything else except the 7/8 terminals on VR seem to test oK. I get like 2 v instead of 65-85v per the tech manual. Your previous posts on this issue were very helpful, thanks. The 802 will make 120/240 when the master switch is held in start but only 25 v in run.

I am not sure why the diodes blew, I realize that they can fry due to over voltage if cranked too long, but the engine started right up after new batteries, oil, fuel, filters, etc. We will see if the new VR fixes it all??

Just curious has anyone put a SX460 AVR in an 802a or 803a? i have seen the posts on other gensets.