My Twenty Two has a generator located on lower right front of the engine. Why is it there? I have a magneto so I don't need it to run the engine. I don't have a battery to charge and I've never installed a stereo, as yet,so what's it doing? I'm in the dark and the manuals say nothing about it.

It had lights.

Thanks. I think I knew that much, but not a lot more. Was there a regulator, a relay, or did the lights just dim and brighten with the engine speed? Lots of them back then did. Without a battery or a regulator it's the only way they could operate.

We have that same set up on a twenty two but ours does have a battery box on the left fender with switches for the lights. The generator has a cutout of some sort on it, but I do not know how that functions in use other than to break current to the battery when voltage is achieved in the battery???

only "cuts out" when the generator stops charging. IE: the engine shuts off.
On those early generator charging systems they charged all the time which is why checking the water level in the battery was a critical maintenance item.
I run a Ford generator on my John Deere to charge the starting battery and run the lights. To keep it from boiling the battery I opened it up and turned the third brush thus lowering the charge rate.
Now here is the critical part!
DO NOT RUN THOSE OLD GENERATORS WITHOUT THE BATTERY ATTACHED!
The generator output voltage will go sky high without the battery to regulate it! This is direct information from my Ford Model A books. All different authors, so it must be Gospel.
Now you are going to reply that its a Delco system to which I may reply that in the John Deere description of operation it states............
(got to look up the answer)

Some systems used a battery....some didn't.

It sounds like I'll have to use enough lighting to consume the output of the generator if I don't use a battery. Two or four lights should be enough.