Chorehorse question.

[Jordan Baker]

Hi everyone


Currently working on restoring a chorehorse generator I recently picked up. Does anyone know what the proper colour was on the small round charging plate? I've seen examples with the plate being red and others being black. This is the plate mounded beneath the charging rate knob.

I'll post pictures of my restoration efforts later tonight.

[Bruce MacMillan]

Mine was red, made by Outboard Marine & Manufacturing.

[Jordan Baker]

Thanks Bruce.

On futher inspection I found traces of red inside some of the small letters.

I also found a nice C Broad Arrow stamped into the generator housing. It was under a few layers of paint.

As for the restoration I stripped the unit down into individual pieces and sub assemblies. Ran most of them through the sandblasting cabinet and then used a rattle can of green to paint it. I do need to replace the spark plug cable. But that will come another day.

[Jordan Baker]

Things are coming together. Thankfully no bits were left over.

[Jordan Baker]

The nice little stamped C.

[Robert Bergeron]

Nice job Jordan.

You know they start with the batteries you want to charge don't you ?

Easy to start as eating icecream.

Just touch that contact button and away it goes.

Then you adjust the carburator and it can go on till the fuel tank is empty.

What a nice , sturdy and usefull piece of kit !

Cheers.

Robert

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Jordan, any idea what the colour was on the square face where the ammeter gauge and side panels are? One of mine that is peeling post-war paint to show brown underneath would indicate these parts were grey, similar to a 19 set face.

[BCA]

Both the WW2 CHI-395 and the post-war conversion PU-5008 have silver-coloured control panels (front and sides) as well as silver-coloured rope pullies. I think aluminum spray paint is close. Perhaps someone has figured out the circuit changes that were done to convert the 15 volt WW2 units to the 30 volt post-war units. ............ Brian

[Jordan Baker]

I did find a few flakes of silver paint. I will be going back and repainting those parts tomorrow.

Thanks for the clarification Brian.

[BCA]

I have always been surprised at the minimal attention to restoring these nifty little generators. I think their time has come.

[Grant Bowker]

Thank you for raising the question Brian, that's something I've always wondered about too. You would think it might be a relatively simple change in the construction (but maybe not easy to reverse the change after the fact).

Originally Posted by BCA

Perhaps someone has figured out the circuit changes that were done to convert the 15 volt WW2 units to the 30 volt post-war units. ............ Brian

[Mike Kelly]

I had a problem with my chorehorse, trying to start it . After looking at everything I discovered there is a suppression resistor in the ignition lead to the spark plug , the resistor is hidden under the shielded covering of the ignition lead . That resistor was faulty .

The other type of chorehorse found over here , which looks similar to the Canadian version, is the US made one, it also generates 240 AC as well as the 14V DC , I guess it was made for Lend-Lease .

[charlie fitton]

I looked at both the 12V and 24V manuals, and they use the same schematic drawing for both. So - not a lot of hints there. I was hoping to see a simple change like parallel connected fields switched to series.

RPM didn't change by much, so that leaves the number of windings in the fields themselves. Not an easy switch.

On the other hand, by turning the generator output amperage down, you could put a bit of a charge into a single 12V battery in it's stand alone mode. I think modern batteries capable of 8000 watts of output can handle 300 watts in...

standing by to be corrected...

[Grant Bowker]

If you are desperate... https://www.kijiji.ca/v-autos-autres...948/1314655550 but he's asking $1250.00