About 100 feet into a offroad trip, the generator in the mog died in a cloud of smoke. The mog was waiting patiently at the bottom of a hill when an onlooker pointed out the smoke coming from under the hood. I quickly popped the hood and saw that it was coming from the generator. While I grabbed the fire extinguisher, my friends unplugged the giant cable that runs to the voltage regulator. By the time I got back around the front of the mog, the smoke was diminishing so I decided to grab the camera and take a picture of it in it's death throes.

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Once home, I removed the generator from the mog and took it apart to try to determine the possible cause of it's demise. I say "try to determine" because even though these are simple devices, they still baffle me. To my uneducated eye, I can't find anything really suspicious except for a bare wire on the armature. Is this a cause or merely a symptom? The only thing conclusive is that most of the components have a really strong burnt electrical smell.

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Generator housing showing field coils and smoke damage. In the second image, the upper coil has the most damage but it was mounted in that same position so if it is just smoke damage then that would make sense.

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Commutator and armature. Notice the bare wire and some of the solder balls at the bottom of the commutator that have not been knocked off yet. There were a lot more before removing the generator from the mog and there were also some solder balls on the connections to the brushes.

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Brushes look to be in good shape. The brush connection that looks burnt was mounted at 12 o'clock so I think that is just smoke damage. The second image is the back of the belt pulley and some generator blood? Possibly cooked grease from the front bearing?

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A couple of pictures of the inside of the voltage regulator. It was suggested that a possible cause of the generator failure could be a stuck contact in the regulator. When I opened up the regulator, I thought the front contact looked like it was melted together but it would still separate. I don't know if that contact has always looked that way or maybe it is the culprit in bringing an early end to my day of wheeling.