electrical issue

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nuclearlemon

nuclearlemon

not an addict
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just before moab, the ammeter pegged on the 76 pig. checked with a voltmeter and battery was getting 14.78. put in new napa voltage regulator. all was good. went to moab, came home...all was fine. at same time, replaced ignition switch with new oem, fixed a couple of battery connections and installed new aftermarket gear reduction starter.

parked rig for a month and a half or so (not doing much driving wth the fuel $). went to drive it, battery was dead. threw in another battery...next day, drove it to work all was fine. coming home, ammeter was pegged again.

next day drove it to work, all was fine. go to leave work and starter sounded funny, but fired right up...ammeter pegged on the way home.

next day, fired right up, but stalled while pulling out of the driveway (my bad, didn't pull choke, didn't let it warm up). hit the key again...nothing...not even a click. pull key completely out, still nothing.

go get meter and check battery...it's 11.74. just for grins i try to start it and it tries to fire up, but i'm not in to hit gas. jump in and turn key...nothing....not even a click.

put charger on...when it hits 12.4, i try it...not even a click. put charger to 50 amp start. not even a click.

when i got home, i pulled the starter and "tested" it by touching wires direct to battery. of course, I jumped, but thinking afterwards, i'm pretty sure the bendix gear didn't pop out and spin. did it again and it did spin. put it in and drove to work the next day. fine going to work, ammeter is pegged coming home.

note: in all instances, ammeter reads just above 0 at idle like it should, but goes sky high as soon as the idle increases.

got home and pulled the choke to keep rpm's up when i got home...battery was reading 13.48volts. tested the one terminal no the back of the alternator that doesnt' have a wire going to it (the three plug deal), and it was about the same voltage wise. then, i was dicking with settings on my cheap a.. volt meter and fried it. :doh:

any clues? could the ammeter be bad? i'm far from an electrical person (electrical is evil and bad). i did swap in a new voltage regulator (i'd bought two so i could carry a spare since i don't have faith in napa parts when it comes to cruisers) and it's not the regulator.
 
If I remember correctly, the ammeter actually measures voltage across a calibrated resistance. If that calibrated resistance were to fail open, then the ammeter would either peg high or low depending on whether the alt voltage or the batt voltage were higher. I don't remember if that resistor is in the meter (meaning all of the current for all circuits passes through the meter) or in the harness -- in my '70 Cougar it was some sort of resistor wire in the harness.
 
Inge; :wrench:you might check this link out; it explains nicely how to bypass the regulator and rule out an AC generator problem or a regulator problem......my guess it is a alternator field going bad...but it could be that you got two bad regulators from Napa............the good thing about this link is that it simplefies things for idiots like myself........have to have things simple and visual:o

HTH
Lou

AutoZone.com | Repair Info | Alternator - How To Instructions
 
My tale of woe..was with 84 mini truck. When the original alt died. Got a Peep boys alt and vreg. I would cook batteries like there was no tomorrow...kept doing the kabukie dance with new alts and vregs with Peep boys...would hit the Sears to verify my readings of constantly over charging the system (oh yes each time they'd plop a new battery in too) were correct. This went on for years...until I was tired of the circle jerk. After yet another new die hard, I went to the dealer, popped for a toyota reman alt and a toyota regulator and viola, problem solved for years to come. Since then, when it comes to these two components, I take the hit and save the aggrevation. Don't know why exactly the crap form Peep boys didn't ever work, but you may be experiencing the same issue with the NAPA stuff..even though it should be better quality than Peep's.
 
ok, update.

turned out the battery (checker auto special) had a dead cell in it. swapped in an old optima, all was fine. drove it quite a few times before my tire blow out a couple of months ago. parked it after that while i was waiting on my new tire (driving with my brand new spare and three old tires was NOT kosher with bias ply tires...pulled hard!)

got the new tire a couple of weeks ago (they were backordered, so it took a month or so). in the meantime, the battery drained down to just below happy. when i finally went to start it, it fired up, but died quickly (didnt' pull choke), then wouldn't start. voltage gauge showed 11.62, iirc. no biggie. put it on a quick charge, fire it up and run into the same issue of ammeter pegging with throttle.

figured f'it...i'll deal with it later.

got to thinking...optimas are very hard to recharge, so maybe that's part of the issue. grabbed another spare battery from under the bench, put it on trickle till it was good to go. this weekend, i swapped it in. while hooking up ground, i get a good spark...not a radio memory spark. leave the wire on for a moment to see what happens and within a minute, the power wire (not starter, but the white 10ga or whatever size it is, that (according to a schematic, goes to alt and a circuit breaker that appears to be back by tailgate wiring) starts to smoke.

quickly yanked the cables back off again, but now i gotta figure out what's up there. god i hate electrical. also, can't remember if the last time i was dicking with the tailgate motor if it was before the tire blowout, or after, which may greatly affect where my issue may be.
 
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