Are you setting the meter for a sensible range, i.e., 20VAC or so in this case? Are you measuring off the dynamo or farther away? Are you just spinning the wheel fast enough? Apologies if the questions sound insulting, but many people struggle using meters.
Not insulting at all. Honest questions. But I'm using a Fluke 87V auto ranging multimeter which I'm adept at using. I'm just not experienced enough with these dynamos to know what I was to expect as far as voltage. I didn't feel 1.5 volts was going to be enough, but I thought I would ask to be sure.
Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
I do not think there are any brushes in a bottle dynamo. Just spins a permanent magnet inside of a non-rotating armature with the windings. Can't get any simpler than that. I have never disassembled one, so maybe I have that backwards and the windings spin in perminent magnets? But that would be the hard way to build one.
The bottle dynamos I had (Union brand from Germany) had no holes to shoot in any tuner cleaner, they were supposed to be sealed against the weather.
I have never heard of any capacitors or diodes in them.
Your assessment seems to be in line with what the googles say as far as construction. As far as the windings go, I'm beginning to guess that some of them may be bad, hence why I'm only getting a quarter of what it seems I should be getting. But that is only a SWAG.