generator help

I just got my rebuilt ford 223 running in my 62 f100. I rebuilt the generator (replaced everything). I don't have a guage, just the gen light on the dash. i'm pretty anal and rebuilt it according to my old manual, but the gen light stays on when the truck is running. i haven't run it long enough to kill the battery. i checked my wiring and it's exactly the same as it was when it was working. i'm gonna borrow my friends multi meter later. i'm hoping it's a stupid mistake. any suggestions on what to check? i'm not great with electronics (probably should have just got a rebuilt one but i wanted to try it myself.
Shane

 

If it has a three pole regulator, you might just need to flash the field to get polarity set. It may also have a problem internal to the regulator ie stuck points or a bad coil on one of the poles. In that case you might need a new regulator. If all has been eliminated with the generator then that is pretty much all that's left besides a loose or open wire connection

 

Thanks for the tip. I flashed the field wire with the other one that the manual said to touch it to to set polarity, fired it up again and the danged red light is still on. Regulator is not that old, but could still be bad. hopefully i can figure it out when i get the multimeter. I also thought i might have a bad ground from paint so i filed away the paint from the ground post, and i even used a jumper wire from the ground post to to the chassis and still no luck.

Is there anything that i can check with just a test light???

 

update: I pulled the cover off of the voltage regulator. the thing looks brand new. no fouling, corrosion. it's beautiful. With the engine off, the points on the arm and field coils are closed and the points on the batt coil are open. the book says that this is correct, and when the engine is running the batt points will close when a load is present at about 12 volts. i fired it up, and they didn't close. I manually closed the points on the batt coil in the voltage regulator using the plastic end of a screwdriver and it held closed when the engine was running. I checked the gen light on the dash and it was finally off. I shut the engine off and the light came back on, points opened. started up again and same problem. points open.

Now i don't know if the problem is the voltage regulator, or that there is no load coming from the generator. anybody have this problem before?
Shane

 

At this point things are pointing to the generator. Stuck brushes ,dirty comutator ,poor connection/broken wire in harness-or gen.

 

Got it figured out. When I reassembled it, one brush hung up and didn't completely seat. i barely touched it with a probe through the slot on the housing and it snapped in place. works great now. Thanks for the help.
Shane