If you haven’t tested the voltage regulator on your lawn mower, here are tips on how to test a voltage regulator on a lawn mower that you can easily follow.
One of the most important parts of your lawn mower is the voltage regulator. When it’s not running properly, then your battery will always die. That’s why it’s important to know how to test a voltage regulator on a lawn mower.
Testing the voltage regulator will allow you to know if the battery is working properly or not. That way, you’ll know whether you need to do a battery replacement or not. In this guide, we’re going to teach you how to check a voltage regulator on a lawn mower in just a few steps.
Contents
What Is A Voltage Regulator?
If we were to compare a lawn mower to a car, we can say that the voltage regulator works like the alternator. Its function is to make sure that the electric charge circulates properly back to the battery when the lawn mower is running.
When To Test The Voltage Regulator Of A Lawn Mower?
If you’re a beginner, you probably have some kind of perception that you need to test your voltage regulator all the time or at least regularly. Fortunately, you don’t need to do that. Testing the voltage regulator doesn’t have to be a regular thing. You just need to test it whenever needed.
When do you need to test it, anyway?
Well, the only time you need to test it is if your battery constantly dies. Then that means there may be something wrong with it.
So, if you notice that your battery is exhibiting some strange behavior, you can start following the steps we’ve laid out below:
Lawn Maintenance: How To Test A Voltage Regulator On A Lawn Mower?
The cool thing about testing your mower’s voltage is that you can choose between two methods. You can either test it through the battery or the voltage regulator itself.
Let’s start with the battery:
- Get your multimeter or your voltmeter.
- Connect the positive read cable of the voltmeter to the positive terminal of the battery and do the same for the negative terminal.
- Turn on the switch a level just enough so that the headlights are turned on.
- Set your voltmeter to measure volts.
- Check if the reading states 12 volts.
- Try to turn it on even more and check if the reading is 13 volts.
- If it has this kind of reading, then that means it’s good.
This is the battery method, as we coin it. The other method is known as the voltage regulator method. You’ll also need your voltmeter for this:
- Find the voltage regulator and connect the positive cable to the positive terminal (it’s the red cable).
- Do the same for the negative terminal and cable (the negative cable is the black one).
- Turn on the voltmeter and switch the measurement to volts.
- Turn on the mower’s headlights.
- For this part, you just need to make sure that the voltmeter just has a reading.
For the battery method, you need to make sure the voltage reaches somewhere between 12 to 13 volts. If not, then there is definitely something wrong with the battery. As for the voltage regulator method, you just need to get a reading. If there is no reading, then there is something wrong with the generator itself.
In this kind of case, you may need to either fix it or replace it. You can let a technician take a look at it if you’d like.
Conclusion
Learning how to test a voltage regulator on a lawn mower is one of the most important things to know when you own a lawn mower. Why? This will tell you if your battery or generator is still in working mode. If it is not, then you can expect your mower to always die. In order to do some diagnosis, you need to know how to check the current.
If you notice that your lawn mower keeps on dying, the first thing you should do is do a voltage regulator check-up. Refer back to our really short guide to do that. You can choose either one of these methods or do them both so you can be really sure of your findings.
Once you find out what’s wrong with your machine, then you’ll know what decision you must make.
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