plotthound wrote:spent a few more hours on my project today.if I bump the rpm's up to 60HZ im putting out about 117 to 120volts under a load.thats about the same voltage I get at 51-52 HZ under load as well.i removed the adjuster spring and it looks the same as an OEM I found a picture of.only thing is that the spring has been stretched,3 coils of the spring are pulled away from the others thus making the spring longer.i wonder if that's where the trouble lies? I wish I owned a proper tach,this one I have that wraps around the plug wire is garbage.
thanks again
Stretched governor spring. (also called sensitivity spring on a gen and some have multiple holes to hook the spring, some don't.
I found that usually the spring itself needs to be close to the outermost hole or notch usually, but since your is stretched which would make it weaker. I've seen old GENERATOR gov springs get weak and the gen do a lot of hunting and surging when first loaded and unloaded even though without a load they are on freq at 62 hz. (spring is too weak and the gov is hunting/surging)
Yes the governor spring will make a huge difference in the initial running hz and then later if it's too wimpy/weak hunting/surging will be worse than normal.
Just some general ideas about your spring, so as to get the gen Hz in the ballpark using your old spring.
With some care you might get your old stretched spring's tension in the ballpark is take a spring scale or a gunsmith trigger spring scale or even a digital fish weighing scale that reads around 3-4 lbs (just a guess)
Take the scale and hook it onto the spring and pull on the spring to see how much addition force (and spring length) you need to get the gen on freq. (some gens have a adjustment screw so as to actually pull the spring with more force to increase the Freq.)
But you FIRST do need a good ACCURATE hz or freq meter instead of using a erratic tach.Once you determine how much spring force you need you can shop for another spring or rig a double hook from piece of throttle cable to hook into the coils on yours and to the governor arm so as to get an idea of how much yours needs shortened. If the spring is too strong you cannot get the hz down low enough, if the spring too weak/wimpy and the gen running at 62hz the gen will hunt and surge more (governor too sensitive) as load is added and removed.
If you have a Honda part number sometimes a saved search on flea bay of NOS stuff will pop up.