Recently several members of the forum assisted me to repair my 12 Volt charging system. Part of the system repair involved replacing the brushes which I decided to do while the generator was installed on the engine and without rotating the generator which involves disassembling external engine components. My friend Jeff and I took on this very challenging task which took about an hour. The top brush was accessible and quite easy to remove and replace from the top however, the bottom brush was awkward and required the use of a mirror, working backwards and against gravity removing the screw that fastens the pigtail, pulling the spring away holding the worn brush in, removing and replacing with a new brush and reinstalling the screw fastening the pigtail.
The task began with removing and replacing the top brush with many of the same tools required for removing the bottom brush. To begin the bottom brush we removed the fan belt and pulled the dipstick out of the engine and placed a small tin box on the engine tin to prepare a level surface to place a mirror from my wife's Compact (makeup) kit. We could see the bottom brush, spring, pigtail and screw but had to work backward to the image of the components in the mirror.
Note the 2" slotted screw driver bit and the special ratchet from Amazon and magnet tool used to remove the screw, the angled pick to lift the spring clear of the brush and needle nose pliers to pull the old brush out by the pigtail.
important: Install new brush, allow the angled pick to lower the spring to contact the top of the new brush causing pressure through the brush to make good contact on the Armature. To install the screw, prepare a length of black electrical tape and puncture hole in tape to put screw through the sticky side, then put the slotted end of the slotted screw driver bit onto the slotted head screw and hold the screw and bit together while wrapping electrical tape together to hold the two tight. Without putting the ratchet handle on the bit, start the first couple of turns of the screw through the pigtail contact into the threaded frame while holding the magnet on a long handle (second person), snap the ratchet on the bit and finish tightening the screw in place.
You are done!!
