Ian,
With the way you have the alternator connected I believe that for the most
part everything is as it should be. The reason that your ammeter is
reading the way it is is that you relocated the connection from the
alternator to the battery. Before you connected the new alternator the
stud on the alternator connected to the white wire, which is connected to
one side of the ammeter. The opposite side of the ammeter connects to the
battery. Now the ammeter connects to the same side of the ammeter as the
battery. All the loads on the car are connected to the other side of the
ammeter. In the old configuration the only current that flowed through the
ammeter was what went to or from the battery because the loads were on the
same side of the ammeter as the alternator. Does this make sense?
One way to fix this problem is to connect the white wire that you taped
off to the stud on the back of the alternator. Leave the wire that goes
directly to the battery there also. The readings on the ammeter will show
a bit of charge or discharge, but won't have the range that it had before.
This is alright.
The one thing that concerns me is that you state that you read over 16V
between the alternator output and the engine block. This is not correct.
The reading should be the same as what you read across the battery, 13.6V.
I believe that you either have a bad engine ground strap, the strap is
missing, or some how your reading was in error. Give it another check.
If your recheck shows the same readings please let us know how the battery
is grounded. Is it conneted directly to the engine block, or to the body?
Is there a heavy wire between the engine and frame?
Peace,
Pat
- Support Habitat for Humanity, A "hand up", not a "hand out" -
Pat Horne, Network Manager, Shop Supervisor, Future planner, CS Dept,
University of Texas, 1 Texas Longhorns, #C0500,Austin, Tx. 78712 USA
voice (512)471-9730, fax (512)471-8885, horne@cs.utexas.edu
On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, ian miller wrote:
> As I mentioned earlier today my car is finally back on the road, but it
> still has a few problems which perplex me. Todays problem for the roadster
> knowledge collective is a charging one. I have been struggling wiht the GM
> 1 wire conversion for a while now. The 1 wire alternator I bought has 2
> wires and a post. I ran the red wire to the post then a wire from the post
> to the battery via a inline fuse. the white wire I just taped off. Car not
> running I read 12.8 volts across the battery on my $15 multiguage. Car
> running I read 13.8 across the battery and 16.4 between the large post on
> the alternator and the engine block. Sounds good right! Well my amp guage
> reads about -2 amps with nothing on and pegs at -30 with my electric fan,
> lights and driving lights on. This equates to approximately 45 minutes of
> driving time with only the electric fan. What is going on?
>
> Thanks
> Ian Miller
> 66 1600 (stroked)
>
>
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