Kohler generator

[wsteelenyc]

Anyone have any thoughts in why this worked with my Kohler generator? I'm assuming it had a similar result as flashing the field, but not sure.

[KyleR]

Never seen that before, but I will say that corrosion on connections does some really weird things! Whenever I see something unusual in my electrical system, unless it is something obvious, my first go-to is to look for corroded connections. I have found ones that looked like they were okay end up being the culprit! I would definitely want to figure that one out though! I generally take the KISS approach until proven otherwise.

[km1125]

Yep, same as flashing the field, but it's using the loads as a temporary source.

This is the same reason most (if not all) generators have a capacitor. The capacitor stores a bit of energy and feeds it back to the generator for it to develop that magnetic field. If the capacitor is bad, then you can feed any energy into the generator to get it to develop one. That's why some folks will use an old drill motor and spin it while plugged into the generator... the drill motor is acting as a micro generator and gives just enough voltage so that the big generator will develop a magnetic field.

That guy likely has a capacitor that's failed or failing.

[tomschauer]

Yep, the capacitor has failed.