broken regulator?

[bigpino]

Hi guys, I'm doing a great job on braking things lately. This time I wanted to check the alternator's brushes. I thought I had to separate the cooling body (see pic). I raised it about 1/4 inch and saw that some connections were going towards the cooling body. So I guess I broke it. Using a 'house' hold drill machine to turn the alternator (~2000rpm) wouldn't give more than 1 volt connected on the two right connectors. The top two wouldn't give anything at all. What do you guys think? Is it broken? Did I test the wrong connectors? How do you remove the regulator anyway? It seems stuck to something else than the two bolds.

[81 911 SC]

To remove the regulator you should only need to remove the 2 bolts and wire connections and it should pull right out. Why are you testing the alternator? Did your light come on? Did you hook a voltmeter upto the battery and test that way to see if the battery is still getting charged?

[bigpino]

I was doing the oil leaking fixes, since I dropped my engine. I thought: why not check the wear of brushes of the alternator, since I dismounted the fan and house anyway. So I'm not able to test it on the motor.

One should measure something when the alternator is turning ~2000rpm, right? So either the regulator is gone now (I pried the cooling body) or I'm measuring from the wrong connectors. Or is there a third possibility?

ps.: regulator is not coming off after removing the bolts within the red indication of the photo. It is very loose, but somehow something is sticking to it!

[bigpino]

Why is the regulator not coming off after removing its two bolts? And is it possible to test the regulator without the engine?

[Gunter]

To see how much is left of the brushes and the wear on the commutator you need to take the regulator off.
After removing the 2 bolts, wiggle carefully and watch the inside where the brushes make contact; they are spring-loaded.
The way you test it is Mickey Mouse.
If it has lots of wear, lots of miles, and needs new brushes, why not have it rebuild?
Then you have real insurance.

[john walker's workshop]

back out the long screw behind the regulator first. then you have to very carefully work the regulator out and up without breaking one of the brushes. easy to break them. they ride on a commutator ring that gets badly grooved and the brush hangs in the groove as you lift the regulator and breaks off.

[bigpino]

Gunter, I thought normally changing the brushes will suffice for the first maintenance.

John, do you have pics of those grooves and how the brushes are hanging in there? I guess I should be able to slide the regulator over the hole of the removed long screw. The springs should force the brushes towards the center of the axle of the alternator, right?

Is it correct to assume that there will be at least a few volts when turning the alternator at 2000rpm detached from the motor? Electric schematics indicates: red<->plus , brown<->ground , blue<->charge indicator. Have only one volt @ 2000rpm???