I have a mep-003a that works great, but has high voltage. I swapped control boxes with my 002a and everything works great. I suspect the VR is bad but before I chase my tail for a week I thought I would ask. Is there another component that could cause this problem inside the control box? At least the problem is isolated to the control box.
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MEP-003a high voltage
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Isaac-1
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Most common cause of high voltage on MEP-002a and MEP-003a generators is a bad output transistor on the voltage regulator board. These transistors will burn out if anyone tries to run the generator at below operating speed for warm up or shut down for more than a few seconds. if you look at the board there are probably 3 transistors 2 small ones and a larger one that is held to the board with 2 screws and nuts. It is the larger one you need to replace, they typically sell for about $5 from the online electronics houses, or sometimes on Ebay. Remember on these generators to always start them and immediately get them to 1800 rpm / 60 hz operating speed, NEVER throttle down to a low idle.
Ike
p.s I don't have the part number off hand on the transistor, if you have yours handy it will be printed on the transistor starting with JAN, when ordering replacements you can look up the same number dropped the mil spec "JAN" prefix it is the same part just without the mil spec traceability for about 1/4 the price.
Also if upon start up you get normal voltage for a few seconds / minutes then it start climbing it is almost certainly the above mentioned transistor, there are other possible sources for this condition, but they are much less common. There are trouble shooting tests, but given the ease of changing out the transistor and it by far being the most common cause for this symptom it is probably easier to just go ahead and change it out, then trouble shoot if it does not fix the problem.
Ike
p.s I don't have the part number off hand on the transistor, if you have yours handy it will be printed on the transistor starting with JAN, when ordering replacements you can look up the same number dropped the mil spec "JAN" prefix it is the same part just without the mil spec traceability for about 1/4 the price.
Also if upon start up you get normal voltage for a few seconds / minutes then it start climbing it is almost certainly the above mentioned transistor, there are other possible sources for this condition, but they are much less common. There are trouble shooting tests, but given the ease of changing out the transistor and it by far being the most common cause for this symptom it is probably easier to just go ahead and change it out, then trouble shoot if it does not fix the problem.
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Spend a little time searching and reading. The part number has been posted a few times in the past and this exact problem had been covered to death.
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