Here's my problem. Found the wire attached to the STA wire hanging loose. After looking at all the digrams i can find they all say the STA wire goes from the alternator to the regulator but the regulator has the factory plug installed with all the wires there and going to somewhere else, no place to plug the wire i found into. The alternator only has 3 wires coming off it ( batt, field and stator). This is on an 82 f250 without air. where the hell does this wire go???

 

It was connected to the choke on some, but not many, of the trucks. There's about 7 volts on that connection, and Ford set up the electric choke to use that voltage.

 

manual choke on this one. So the battery and field wires are all that should be coming off this alternator and hooked up to anything?

 

It didn't come from the factory with a manual choke.

Clip it off if you don't like it.

 

You must have the gauges in the dash. Here's the diagram.

 

Yes, only two wires then. Here's your wiring diagram:

 

thanks guys

 

Found the problem. Small drain somewhere in the electrical, probably why the PO installed a master battery disconnect switch

 

Pull fuses one at a time until the drain goes away. Typically it will be an aftermarket radio.

 

Wasn't David saying -in another thread- that his son's truck needed an ignition triggered relay for the stereo amp?

disconnecting/isolating the battery gets old really fast.