> Neither- it's an alternator, and it's built into and under the
> flywheel which
> has permanent magnets.
Aha again! In that case, please ignore everything I said before. I thought
we were talking DC generator as found on old cars, where the regulator
controls the field. Permanent magnet alternators are yet another kettle of
fish.
For one thing, the 'regulator' is also providing the rectification to turn
AC from the windings into DC. Since the magnetic field cannot be
controlled, it also has to throttle the output in some way. Looking at your
photos, I would guess that those are SCRs, and that the regulator uses some
sort of phase-change circuitry to adjust how early or late in the cycle the
SCRs are triggered. Kind of like a lamp dimmer, except only conducting for
the right polarity.
But that's just a SWAG, not to be taken internally.
I've not ridden a bike for many years, but I believe some variation of that
is still common today. If so, it shouldn't be too hard to find a modern
equivalent; although you might wind up using only one phase of a 3-phase
rectifier/regulator.
-- Randall
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