Ammeter reading

[curtsellers]

Hi

Just rewired my alternator/solenoid/regulator after finding some melted wires from the PO's shoddy wiring job. (thanks for the advice)

Question - what should the ammeter read? On idle the stock ammeter is at 0. when i accelerate or rev the engine it goes up to 60.

Prior to the rewiring it always stayed at 0 no matter what.

When running i get 15 to 16 volts at the battery. stopped it shows 13.5. Its a brand new battery.

Did I jack something up in my rewire or was it bad before?

thanks
curt

[69crawler]

Re: Ammeter reading

15-16volts is high. Recheck wires. Alt may not be turning off and over charging.

[904Bronco]

Re: Ammeter reading

Alt could be bad and shorted internally, causing the battery drain...

[70 Steed]

Re: Ammeter reading

I had exactly the same issue which is why I cleaned up the wiring that I spoke about in your other post. I had 15.5 volts going into the battery from the alternator. It could be that it isn't wired right or the voltage regulator is bad. 15.5 volts is definitely too high, you want about 14.5.

60 amps on the amp meter is definitely too high. With a fully charged battery the amp meter should only read slightly above zero when the engine is reved up.

[curtsellers]

Re: Ammeter reading

hmm. Like you guys said - its only about 4 wires and kinda hard to mess up. Would think it would either work or wouldn't assuming all regulator and alternator are good. anything I could have crossed that would cause that?

[70 Steed]

Re: Ammeter reading

Like I said I had the same issue with 15.5 volts to the battery. It wasn't wired the way the wiring diagram said. It also wiped out the voltage regulator. You
might want to put in a new regulator. They are only about $25.

[curtsellers]

Re: Ammeter reading

Figured it out. Thanks. Ended up being a bad voltage regulator like you suggested. That fixed my battery drain issue as well. on to the next thing....