No charge from Alternator

[Jkountz]

Well gang finally we have had the EUREKA moment we've all been waiting for. With the very generous help from our own wiring guru Dave Bailey the cure has been found. Turned out to be a broken wire near the starting regulator. Dave knew exactly how to narrow the trouble down and find where it was. I want to say a huge thanks to everyone for their help and especially to Dave, the guys knows his stuff!! I got a solid charging system now and life is once again good!!

[ibdilbert01]

Fantastic!!!!  Very glad to hear you got it fixed!!!!   

May I ask what a starting regulator is?

[DaveVA78Chieftain]

For everyones benifit, a fusible link is a smaller gauge wire connected to larger gauge wire.  The insulation on the fusible link is designed not to burn or melt.  In Jim's case, the main harness 10 gauge wire connected to the starter solinoid B+ terminal had a 14 gauge fusible link protecting it.
The moral of this story is the intent of fusible link is to open if the current  through the protected wire gets to high.  Sometimes, the high current may be right on the edge such that only some of the wiring strands in the link fail but not all.  A fusible link wire will become very soft and flimsy at the failure point when it opens like this or fully opens.  The even smaller wire results in a high resistance such that the regulator is not able to see the true battery voltage.  As such the chargng system does not respond correctly.  You use a test method called voltage drop to locate this sort of problem.    Your looking for an excessive drop in voltage across wiring junctions.  For reference, I have posted a link in the free manual section to a nice document by Fluke explaining lots of different ways (like this) of how to use a multimeter for troubleshooting automotive circuits.

Dave

[ibdilbert01]

And from a site you recently recommended.....

http://www.madelectrical.com/catalog/fusible-link.shtml   

[Jkountz]

Id also like to add Dave that the chassis amp meter is now working again. Going up I-81 today I flipped it over to DUAL mode and the needle moved over to the right a bit and then slowly worked its way back to the middle just like it should. When I got home I checked both batteries and they were the same voltage across the terminals. Thought you would like to know!!

[DaveVA78Chieftain]

Gotta love it when you can depend on the gauge information.
Now you get to get the fuel problem fixed.
Dave