You’re Never Too Old To Learn COLUMN BY GLENN CHEANEY The old saying “it?s not what you know, it’s who you know” came abun- dantly clear the other day. As long as I have been doing this job hands-on I should know everything, right? Not! The other day we had an order for 6-volt positive ground 10SI. No problem. We just made this seriously premo unit insulated our three regulator screws jumper from negative to negative on the regulator and polarized the rotor and—it didn’t work. Of course we took it back apart to check components. They were all good. Now it’s been a long time since I have done one of these and the proce- dures haven’t changed. It’s really only a 27SI positive ground for the most part. It still didn’t work. Now what? The point I am trying to make is there is a wealth of knowledge available in this industry. There are people who will freely impart their experience. All one has to do is ask. Rather than spend the extra time for me to try various things to get it going, I would rather talk it over with someone else whose opinion I respect and get on with the job. I called my friend and current owner of G&G Generators, Henderson, Ky., Randy Jones. He assured me I had done everything he would have done to that point, but I should consider energizing a stator leg. We hadn’t built the unit with an R termi- nal. By the time I had gotten off the phone my newest young associate had one installed ready to try again. Jones suggested that if applying battery nega- tive didn’t work, try from positive ground from the case. Happy days when we tried from the positive of the case it turned on. Life was good! Would I have gotten it to work? Of course, but most likely I saved a lot of time by picking up the phone and asking for help. The job stayed profitable and we went on to our next project. Sometimes the pragmatic approach is the better serving one. I learned that sharing this experience may help some- one who may face this in the near future. Sharing information is, in my humble opinion, at this point in our industry’s current turmoil, the way to help many of us survive and prosper. Glenn Cheaney is a 37-year industry veteran and currently doing consulting work.