I bought an ammeter from Sears.. After putting the battery on a charger for two days, I followed the directions in the manual for testing the system. With the all the lights on, the generator was putting out about 20 amps, which didn't seem to bad to me considering the battery was fully charged. So I took my battery in to have it checked, and found it had a bad cell. The NAPA guy wanted to know if I wanted another 8 volt battery. That's how I found out I had an 8 volt battery. He said people used them to get faster cranking from the starter. I chose to buy a heavy duty 6 volt to replace it. But I got to wondering how my 6 volt charging system could ever have managed to charge an 8 volt battery. Doesn't the voltage of the charging system need to be greater than the battery voltage before current will flow through the regulator and on into the battery?
