Re-inventing the wheel--probably

[williamsk1936@yahoo.com]

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I was looking at a Wheezer the other day and noticed it has a battery and a means to charge it for the lights. The thought came to me concerning the white lighting wire on the Happy Time putt putts.
I am putting one together to sell for profit and would like to put a full-wave bridge rectifier on the wire and maintain a battery with day riding so I could run a meaningful-sized headlamp bulb for night riding. Any of you electrical nerds know of a simple solid state voltage controller to prevent overcharging? How about a source of decent 6V head and tail lights? I'm sure there is a red diode for the rear, but a durable powerful headlight would be nice.

[Scotchmo]

Trying to use a full wave rectifier in these bikes presents a couple of problems that indicate that was never the intent for the white wire. However, a half wave rectifier charging a 6v battery works with no problems (other than the wimpy output). You may get adequate battery life even without the regulator.

WHITE – white wire from motor
RED – to light, horn, switches, etc.
BLACK – black wire to motor or to ground
D1 – rectifier diode, I used Radio Shack 276-1141
Z1 – zener diode (regulator), 6.8v, 5w - 1N5342B
R1 – power resistor (regulator), 10ohm, 5watt, I used Radio Shack 271-132
F1 – fuse, I used a 5 amp fuse
B1 – 6v lead acid battery, I used a 1.3ah SLA
Battery box – 2.0x2.5x5.0 plastic Radio Shack project box
Mounting brackets – plastic conduit clamps from Home Depot

[loquin]

On the HT engine, the CDI apparently uses the "+" half of the AC Cycle, so if you rob power from it, the spark is affected.

One of the other posts in this forum discusses this, and the fact that you can pull quite a bit of power from the mag if you use the "-" half of the waveform. This means swapping the polarity of all three of the polarized components of your schematic (diode, zener diode, and battery)

[Scotchmo]

On the HT engine, the CDI apparently uses the "+" half of the AC Cycle, so if you rob power from it, the spark is affected.

One of the other posts in this forum discusses this, and the fact that you can pull quite a bit of power from the mag if you use the "-" half of the waveform. This means swapping the polarity of all three of the polarized components of your schematic (diode, zener diode, and battery)

That is not true for my motor. I can only pull full power from a negative ground system. That leads me to believe that there may be differences in these motors. I have solicited others to perform a simple diode test but have not gotten any takers so far.

Hook one end of diode up to the white wire and short the other end to the motor. If the motor dies, reverse the diode and try it again. The motor should continue to run even with the shorted diode. That is the correct polarity to use. If the diode stripe (cathode) is toward the white wire, then you should use a positive ground system, otherwise, you need a negative ground system.

I have not looked at the alternator components, but maybe the entire coil assembly and/or rotor can be mounted upside down, backwards, or flipped over. That could account for the differences.