How To: C15a Wire-3 restoration

[Jordan Baker]

Came home from work this morning and decided to finish the rebuild on the starter. All in all it went together without any issues.

Next up will be the generator.....but first some lunch.

[chris vickery]

Nice work Jordan. Did you do anything to the armature? eg undercutting the mica?

[Jordan Baker]

Thanks Chris.

No the armature was in great shape. Just polished it up a tad on a lathe.


I’ve now started in on the generator rebuild but will have to wait again while I search out some new parts. While checking some things I discovered the armature is showing fully open with an ohm meter between the shaft and commutator and the body of it. I believe that this means the armature is no good.

The parts manual calls for 1879002. This seems to cross reference to the following via searching in the web.

1921235
1877806
1932900
1963977

[Jordan Baker]

Thanks to ebay I managed to find the parts I needed for very reasonable prices and free shipping with the states. I had gotten rather frustrated looking for the generator field coils using he parts numbers from the parts book. However I stumbled onto a wed site with a period Delco Remy parts crossover. The individual left and right coils x-ref’d to s single number. A quick check on eBay produced a pile of NOS parts.

In the meantime while I’m waiting for this parts I decided to start the pulling apart of the transmission. Everything is coming apart nicely and I’ve got some bits soaking in parts cleaner to remove the 75 year old grease/oil. I’m really glad Bob Carrier posted that link to those hard to remove shaft seals and that I picked up a couple of them. Removing the original destroyed it.
A coupe of the gears have some minor rusting but I feel these should still clean up alright and be good to go. I’m also planning on replacing the bearings. Would it be best to use fully sealed ones?

[Grant Bowker]

Possible problems with sealed bearings:
Fully sealed, you will be relying on the grease within the bearing only, no transmission oil will get in, so new oil in the transmission only helps the gears, same old lubricant in the bearings.
Sealed one side (outer face), solves the issue above but no lubricant reaches the original style seals to help them slide on the shaft so they are likely to have a shorter life.
My choice would be new seals, separate from the bearing, running on original shaft (as long as it shows no grooving). I forget whether the gear clusters are one piece or pressed onto the shafts. If they are pressed assemblies, adding speedisleeves to repair scored shafts could make them difficult to take apart if you ever need to separate the cluster. But on the mileage we do on restored trucks what are the chances of that?

[Jordan Baker]

Ok thanks Grant. What you’ve said makes sense.

Work continued on the generator rebuild today. I picked up a small parts kit from the place in Texas. NOS field coils were sourced on eBay. I also found what I thought was a correct armature but it ended up not being correct. However after some more internet searching I found a correct one in Canada. Hopefully it arrives next week. Some fiddling may still be needed in getting the coils to seat down properly. I also buffed the brush holder and it cleaned up very well considering what it looked like when I pulled it apart. Lastly nothing like using a 10ton press to press in the oiler caps.

[rob love]

Originally Posted by Grant Bowker

Possible problems with sealed bearings:
Fully sealed, you will be relying on the grease within the bearing only, no transmission oil will get in, so new oil in the transmission only helps the gears, same old lubricant in the bearings.
Sealed one side (outer face), solves the issue above but no lubricant reaches the original style seals to help them slide on the shaft so they are likely to have a shorter life.
My choice would be new seals, separate from the bearing, running on original shaft (as long as it shows no grooving). I forget whether the gear clusters are one piece or pressed onto the shafts. If they are pressed assemblies, adding speedisleeves to repair scored shafts could make them difficult to take apart if you ever need to separate the cluster. But on the mileage we do on restored trucks what are the chances of that?

I, too, have pondered whether to leave the seals or not. Really, for all the miles we will ever put on, the grease within the bearings will be more than enough. I have also removed just the seal on the oil side. I normally pack a little grease into the output seal, so my take on it is if there is not enough lubricant over time that the output seal suffers, then the seal really isn't necessary.

Where these sealed bearings really shine is on the input shafts of the transmissions, especially the Ford CMPs and the Willys Jeeps, neither of which has a particularly effective seal.

[Jordan Baker]

While waiting for the armature to arrive I’ve decided to pull apart the transmission. Following the steps in the maintenance manual everything came apart as it should. All looks really good. Tomorrow will be spent cleaning up the housing and degreasing the gears.