leader rectifier, boffin required

[Anthony Woolhead]

Having taken my bike completely apart I took the rectifier off from the outside. I now realize I should have undone the bolt from inside the frame. The plates all fell apart so I resprayed them. I noticed a couple of the plates had pink deposits around the centre hole. Deeming this to be corrosion I scraped it off. Having re-assembled it I am now wondering if this was some kind of insulative coating to separate the middle plates from the outer ones. Can anyone throw any light on this and if so is there anything I can do to re-instate it?

Cheers, Tony.

[simon.holyfield]

That's an old selenium rectifier, and it sounds like you may have scraped the active ingredient off!

I'd put it back together and leave it for aesthetic purposes. Wire in a modern silicon rectifier, which will last much longer. Selenium rectifiers were superceded in the 60s.

[Anthony Woolhead]

Thanks Simon, how will I know which wires go where?

Tony

[simon.holyfield]

That depends on how you choose to wire it up. The simplest way is to replace the rectifier directly and make use of the voltage control Ariel designed in; an option would be to use a modern regulator /rectifier and make better use of the alternator, maybe converting to 12V at the same time.

A replacement rectifier will have two DC poles marked + & -, and two AC poles marked ~. It doesn't matter which way the AC is connected. The old one will have one DC pole, probably -, with the + on the mounting stud.