Ford 3000 tractor battery not charging SOLVED. Well, sort of! Lucas RB340 and dynamo

Hi all. In this video I battle with the charging system on my Ford 3000 tractor not working as it should. The battery warning light would stay on constantly and there would be no charge going into the battery. I checked out the dynamo, the wiring and the regulator box and finally got it all working. I still think that I have problems with the wiring but since it is now working I'm going to leave it as is for now.
Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe. If you have had a similar problem then I would like to hear from you.
Thanks for watching

[@rickradford3920]

All the forums that show pictures of where the battery cables go have mine reversed. My tractor is running and charging correctly as a positive ground system. I had to field/flash my generator to the negative post of the battery. If I put a voltmeter on the battery, the positive post is reading positive. The battery was not charged incorrectly. It’s truly a 12 V battery +-. I’m going to talk to an old Ford tractor mechanic tomorrow and run all this by him. I own a dyslexic tractor.

[@BlakesDen]

It could have been converted at some point. Farmers are known for their "creative" solutions to problems 🤣

[@jamesbrady8484]

You can adjust the regulator output to increase or decrease it. Play with the spring tension on the voltage regulator relay by adjusting the cam. Chapter 3, pg 26 of service manual. If i recall correctly- more tension on the spring gives higher output. Small adjustments. Voltage regulator is by the D terminal on the end. Finer windings than the reverse current cut out on the other end by the B terminal.

[@BlakesDen]

Thanks. Yes I need to have a play with it as I supect that it is still not quite right

[@rickradford3920]

The old tractor repair shop said he has never seen a positive ground factory Ford 3000 in the US. Ford did build previous to the 3000 tractors with a positive ground. Mine was just incorrectly hooked-up by a past owner. And it did charge that way….but it now charges as a negative ground. He was worried that my regulator my not like being rephrased but it worked fine. The dash will not work as positive ground, I’m replacing my dash currently with a new one. I’m trying to fix this tractor back to factory spec, it will be easier to figure out for next 50 years. .

[@BlakesDen]

Very interesting. From the googling that I did it said that they were all negative earth. But someone could have swapped it if they had another positive earth tractor on the farm and wanted them both to be the same. The good news is that you have it working 🙂

[@georgeclements2742]

Are you really sure that these were negative earth to begin with ? Plenty of cars of the same vintage had positive earth.

[@BlakesDen]

Well....the internet said negative earth so it must be true! The operating manual says negative earth but this is from very early in the production run so they might have done something different. I suspect that if I turn the battery around and connect the control box to earth then it will charge.

[@rickradford3920]

I learned real quick It was a positive ground when I tried to add a extra ground strap to the negative terminal and connected it to the block, lots of sparks. Mine is now charging, thanks for your KZbin and explaining the charging system as a positive ground. I’m replacing the instrument cluster tomorrow.

[@BlakesDen]

@rickradford3920 Thanks for the Thanks! Good to know that you found the video useful

[@rickradford3920]

My battery is truly a positive marked correctly 12 volt battery. The positive side is going to the ground side of the starter, the negative side of the battery is going to the solenoid. This is wrong. My system is charging. If I was to reverse the cables on my battery and re-pulse my generator would this make me a negative ground system? My instrument cluster does not function on my tractor and I don’t want to burn up a new cluster changing it as a positive ground tractor that it is currently.

[@BlakesDen]

Yes that would make it negative ground. Not sure if it would fix your instruments though - all they need is 12v and a reference of 0v (ground). I did see another video on here which mentioned about a ballast resistor on the back of the instrument binnacle which can cause problems.