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Re: Generator on a 51 Packard 200...Autolite

I'm changing the brushes, bearing and bushing. I notice the condenser has a bare wire from the terminal on the generator to the body of the condenser. Questions?
Change it?
if so, will any condenser work?

remove it?
down side to not using one.

Thanks,
Steve......

If the wire is not shorted to the capacitor can, and the capacitor itself is still good, chances are you can remove the terminal, cover the wire with heat shrink, and reinstall a terminal. If that is not feasible, new suppression capacitors are readily available. Do a search for radio noise suppression and several of the old style will come up. According to the service manual, the original was a .5mfd so a replacement should be something around that value and in a configuration appropriate for the location -- both in mounting and in protection from damage.

There should be several others in the car. Typically one is on the ign switch and they were frequently added in other places. If there are others, you can possibly get by without that one. Best way to see is turn the radio on and tune between stations. See what kind of noise appears when you run the engine. The generator will probably put out a whine which is speed related if one is needed at that point. One other minor use for the capacitor is to minimize arcing at the brushes but some cars without radios did without them.

If that is the only one on the car then it will be needed.

Radio suppression condensors for the generators are a stock item at NAPA. IIRC the stock number is RC-1 but best check with the counterman to confirm.

How about deleting your duplicate post? I'll delete my duplicate response.

PS - just confirming, it is NAPA/Echlin RC1 (without the hyphen).

OD duplicate post deleted.
Thank you both OD and HH56 for your help. I just happened to notice that you both have an almost combined total of 20K posts on this forum. No doubt most of them are about helping others, such as myself. I sincerely appreciate how you both, and etal, are so giving with your time and knowledge. A heartfelt thank you.
Best Regards,
Steve........