He says he has the alt warning light on... to me that shows the green/red wire is fine. Unless he has it grounded somewhere by accident.

 

Thank you for completing my thought process..

 

Knowing my stupid luck I probably had it accidently grounded to something. Now I know that the ground on the rear of the alternator is something many have said is optional.. perhaps I could try hooking a ground and seein how it goes. So far I have tore everything apart and am going back to the wiring doing it all over again. Hopefully this will fix it (I bet it was loose connection that caused the truck to not charge.) And I will be sure to take pictures and post them here/make a separate thread with a write up if y'all would like that! Thank you all again :-)

 

Ok update here... I got everything installed again, soldered my wires this time and double checked everything and the truck still died on the way home twice :-( I tore it down and had the alternator tested where I bought it... failed twice. So I have another one and will go home and try this again.

 

Ok so I thought I'd give yall an update.. I started this Monday and here it is Friday and I'm still having a helluva time. I've put in 3 alternators and each one tested bad. 2 of them right out of the box (the 1st one I didn't have tested before I attempted to install it)! So as I've missed a lot of school and had to take a day off work cuz the truck didn't run, I finally decided to put the old 2g back in.. lo and behold the voltage regulator came back bad, I replaced it and still it came back bad and can't charge past 11 volts or less. So I drove across town again to get another 3g alternator which I hope is good... arg this is so annoying lol. Oh well just my luck

Another update I had the latest alternator tested and it came back good 3 times. I put it back in the truck and wired it up thinkin this was case closed. However when I started it up I began to lose charge and the battery light was on In the cab. I had her test it in the truck and it came back with the diodes being bad. She says its the wiring I have no idea. So I'm really scratching my head at this. I triple checked the wiring did it at least 4 times and went over everything with a fine tooth comb and I still got nothin. The only other thing I could think at this point is the alternator is again bad, the plug for the alternator is bad or my wiring is off (unlikely.) This is throwin me for quite the loop.

 

How do you have it wired?

 

I wired it up per the diagrams I have seen on the topic. White and blue wire to the small connector on the side of alt, yellow wire to the positive terminal on rear of alt, and the green/red wire to the green/red wire on the truck. I soldered the wire connections and crimped the wires where the ring terminals were. I also wrapped areas of them with electrical tape. I ran a battery cable from the pos terminal on alt to the mega fuse, and ran another wire from that to the pos terminal of my starter solenoid. I wish I had pics of it but I wasnt sure it'd work so I decided to hold off taking pics till its finished. Anything that I'm doing wrong with the wiring you can see?

 

All I can suggest is making sure that large cable fromt hr alt to fuse is not shorted anywhere, then notch the bracket and get that second bolt in.

 

That's a good idea Evan, I shall try that. I admit I was a bit lazy and did not bother to reclock the alt, so it is very possible that a wire may be grounding on the alt or on the bracket incidentally due to the placement of the connectors to metal ect. Seeing as I have had terrible luck with Orilleys I may go to NAPA and try this again. Get a new Bosch alt from them (a bit more expensive but if it works then worth it) and look around for some non master pro electrical connectors/plugs (read: high quality stuff) and go through the process of clocking the alt, and do all the wiring over again and then loom it all and install on the truck. A bad alt, connector, or a ground is all that I could think of that could be causing me issues at this point. Either that or when my buddy removed the stock harness he messed something up along the line... Thank you for all the help guys I do appreciate it

 

Alright guys so just for kicks I went on over to orilleys got another alternator tested good. The plugs and wires all tested good as well. In addition I had the alternator clocked to the right position as well. So I'm gonna go throw it back in the truck again and see if it works. If it doesn't work then I honestly have no idea what could be wrong with it.

UPDATE:

After the above, I installed the new alt ect and she fired right up and even better yet, charged the battery pretty good and everything appears to be working good Apparently just clocking the alt can work wonders... God I'm so stupid LOL However, now my truck screams bloody murder whenever its on. I'm getting major belt squeal on there (hurts my ears to be near the engine bay with it on, my ears ring for a good 10 minutes after) So it looks like I'll go replace my tensioner assembly from one at NAPA, and I also want to order a gatorback belt as a replacement. My question is, does anyone know what size gatorback belt I would need for the truck? If anyone has ordered one part #s would be AWESOME, but length will be great too It is a 351w and it does have AC. I'd look myself, but I am not near my truck right now, and will not be for a few days so I figured I'd ask here. Once again guys thank you for all the help- I'm almost done, and a thread with pics will come once I get it all resolved!

 

Ok so after looking at the belt I have on the truck currently, I figure that if I order the same size I'll be good. Its 93.5 in long, which will end up being a Goodyear gatorback poly v serpentine belt part no. 4060935. I'll also be getting a new tensioner and will post back when they are mounted up.

 

Well it's a necro post but I figured if anyone ever looks through and finds this thread I want there to be a conclusion. I followed the advice given and have had the 3G swap in my truck ever since the time of the last post. It has worked flawlessly for me thus far. The worst part of it was having to grind down part of the original alternator bracket and replacing some of the stock wiring.

It was fairly straightforward and I feel much better knowing the my truck not only has a lesser chance of catching fire, but also more power output from the alternator as well. Plus the 3G does look mighty good sitting all pretty in the engine bay. xD just figured I would give a conclusion, and I thank eveyone who helped me out on this project you guys rock!

 

Awesome thread, I'm about ready to do this on both my 91 f150 and 79 bronco. Thanks a bunch