Jerry and All,

Success! I finally got the cutout relay dialed in just right.

I started the weekend by building a test setup for adjusting it. I mounted one panel mounted ammeter and two voltage meters in a piece of sheet metal. I added one 100 ohm 200 watt rheostat and a 100 watt 1 ohm current limiting resistor. I wired the rheostat with alligator clips and ran it inline between the voltage regulator field terminal and the field terminal on the generator. I ran the volt meters to the armature and battery terminals on the regulator. I ran the ammeter inline between the battery terminal on the regulator and the physical battery along with the current limiting resistor.

The current limiting resistor keeps the current below about 5 amps. That let me buy a much cheaper ammeter that is accurate to about .25 amps.

I started by using the rheostat to lower the voltage at the armature terminal below battery voltage. I slowly increased the voltage until it was .25-.5 volts above battery voltage (which was easy because of having two volt meters) and then loosened the spring on the cutout until it closed.

I then used the rheostat to lower the voltage at the armature below battery voltage. I kept lowering until it was pulling about 1 amp through the ammeter. It was not releasing the contact so I bent the arm holding the contacts to be closer to the relay coil. I kept repeating this until the contacts reliably opened at about 1 amp.

The second adjustment caused the first to change, so I repeated the entire sequence several times until I could perform both tests without needing any more adjustments.

The relay now works perfectly every time. I get 13.5 volts to the battery at about 1000rpm. I get 14 volts at 1500rpm. It cuts out at idle of 500rpm and starts up at the tiniest amount of throttle. The contacts also close if I put a load on by turning on the lights causing the battery voltage to drop.

Total spend on my test setup was about 30 bucks for the gauges, resistor and rheostat. I used wire, sheet metal and hardware that was laying around.

I can't thank everyone here enough. Especially Jerry for the great directions that couldn't be any easier to follow.

Chad