Smoking Voltage Regulator on a 78 (1 Viewer)

[85fr16]

I was going to fire up my 78 after some years of sitting around waiting to get reassembled and the starter turned real slow like the battery was real low, the battery is good and i even put the booster on it also. Then the voltage regulator started smoking and burned the white wire with the balck stripe on it. I took the covers off the regulator and it looks ok inside.
I had the 40 dissasembled and it is possible I hooked something up wrong but I don't think so.
I had the alt. and the starter checked and cleaned by the local starter shop because it had been sitting for 20 years and they checked out OK ( this was before I smoked the regulator).

Any ideas?

 

[Rocky_LC]

Like all the other recent threads un unexplained smoking wires that occur when people are cranking their engines....

I would say you have a bad ground from the engine to the battery.

Do you have heavy ground cables between the engine to frame, frame to (-) battery, and (-) battery to engine?

 

[Pin_Head]

X2 on the missing/bad ground strap between the frame and starter motor.

 

[85fr16]

X2 on the missing/bad ground strap between the frame and starter motor.

Had forgoten that but put it on and it didn't help, actually after I put the ground on the starter is when I smoked the regulator.

 

[Pin_Head]

It depends on what is "smoked" The white wire w/black strip is a ground wire between the alternator and the VR. It burns up if there is no ground strap.

If the smoke came from the VR itself, then this is probably from it sitting so long and getting dust on the wire wound resistor on the bottom. Once this burns off, it should be OK.

 

[85fr16]

It was the white wire with the black stripe on it, inside the regulator it looks ok. I may have burned the wire when the ground cable was missing and now it will be ok after I fix the white wire with the black stripe.