The Old Ferroresonant MAGNATEK Converters...
These dinosaurs were 30X as common as competitive converters and were a flawed design from the word go... OEM chose the BW Magnatek units because they were the least expensive of the lot. I came a MAG...
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You had the dubious honor of working on a lesser evil, the ferroresonant battery chargers. Do you remember the saturation voltage (rectified) as being 14.0 - 14.1 ? The 1/2" press fit 5010 rectifiers? The loaf of bread size chargers did indeed have no resistors and no relay. They were battery chargers, and actually despite their limitations, they were rugged. Toward the last I played with switching in and out of circuit substitute caps off lesser and greater microfarads. Paralleled the rectifiers with Schottky units. I managed to gain control of charge rate from 13.45 volts to 14.5 via a rotary switch. It's nice reading someone else had one of these critters apart. Apart from inevitable capacitor aging, I actually liked these particular BWM units. But the bottom line must be that when connected to a battery, this unit had voltage regulation .2 to .3 volts too high for maintenance. They will dry out a battery in the course of several months to a year.
Follow the PDF link above if you wish and familiarize yourself with a Gran Mal design, the converter with bleed resistor, relay, and capacitors so inferior, three years of continuous use rendered a finish voltage of 14.4 - 14.5 Pretty impressive nightmare for a "13.8 volts float charger".
Follow the PDF link above if you wish and familiarize yourself with a Gran Mal design, the converter with bleed resistor, relay, and capacitors so inferior, three years of continuous use rendered a finish voltage of 14.4 - 14.5 Pretty impressive nightmare for a "13.8 volts float charger".
