MOPED ARMY

To make the current go in one direction. If you check for continuity, and it does check, switch the leads, and you won't get continuity.

i thought the alt. generated electricity in ac & the rectifier swapped it to dc..

wow i thought all bikes did from the 49cc all the way up to the big boys.. learn something new everyday i guess.. i was under the impression that all ignition systems ran on dc, either 6v or 12v..

But it does work fine without it. Old men are idiots!

What year is the PA50. If it was after 81 or whenever they put on the battery box you need a rectifier for the battery which is dc only. Interesting question to study up on magnetos driving ignition, generators, alternators and 2 stroke electrical theory. Old cars had DC generators. Now they all have ac alternators with rectifiers. Why the switch? And lawnmowers have magnetos with an alternating current....

here's why i just found an tech article because you got me really curious.. its pretty interesting.. all of em have rectifiers just some are separate & some built in..

http://www.electrosport.com/technical-resources/technical-articles/how-motorcycle-charging-system-works

Oh yeah, if you look at the other geographies that had PA50 they may have had batteries where the US did not. I can't remember for sure from the diagrams I was looking at. Probably cheaper to mass produce a "standard" wiring harness and just have the rectum fryer on all of em. I took mine off, never looked back.

I have an idea that might make sense. Let's say you're a mechanic at the local Honda dealer. You work on a wide array of bikes. Some guy brings his Hobbit in for an electrical issue. You start to test with a multimeter set to DC volts, as you assume it is DC volts, because the larger bikes that you work on more routinely tend to be DC voltage. Your multimeter blows because of the different type of voltage. My uneducated guess would be for this type of thing. A kind of idiot-proofing for mehanics. Does this sound reasonable?

Old cars had generators that had deficiencies: the current passed through brushes which limited the output and cause a point of wear (due to arcing).

They then went to mechanical rectifiers then solid state rectifiers on alternators. Some ignition systems still are ac (ak magnito) like lawn mowers.

So you run your hobbit with the rectifier disconnect....and the resistor in?

Let me throw in my two cents even though I only slightly understand magnetos..first in reference to that interesting link above to motorcycle magnetos , three phase ac current , ac rectifiers please note in the articles diagram there are THREE SEPARATE COILS mounted on the magneto each one is 120 degrees separated. That's why there is three phase ac!!! Now my hobbit which I recently bought is not understood yet by me BUT my Vespa bravo IS starting to make a little sense, it has only one lighting coil so by definition it can only produce one wave of ac current! I suspect the necessity for a rectifier is related to both this and of course the need and or presence of a dc battery. The weaker the power output from a magneto the simpler the need to handle excess current. Thats why we need a supply of light bulbs since the simple magnetos do often put out too much voltage.