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Actually, I even tried one of those mechanical Regs. that I took off am older truck.
Heres how I left the truck.
I have 2 newish Alts. and about 3 Regs.
Now I don’t have any power at the green wire with the key on.
i must have melted some wires or blew some fuses further down the line.
i work allot of hours during the week, so I probably won’t get back to the truck until this weekend.
im sure I will have forgotten everything by the time I get back to it!
i thank you all for your help, and I will tear deeper into the truck and see what I find.
Just as a curiosity, didn't Ford use mechanical voltage regulators for alternators up until say the 70s or 80s?
Was the cutout relay on those prone to sticking, like the earlier mechanical generator regulators?
Yes, the good old "tall can" style. From what I've read, the old mid-seventies Monarch/Granada were the first ones to get the electronic one.
But then, maybe it's just listed that way because the engineering number was from that family of cars? Someone will know for sure.
I don't know when they started using them all across the Ford lineup.
The old ones were subject to all the pitfalls you'd expect. But they also worked amazingly well for an amazing number of years sometimes.
I bet it was the wetter environments that tested their reliability though. Out here you might find an old car in the desert that still has it's original!
I remember the old books used to have instructions on how to physically adjust and fine-tune an old regulator. Ahh, the good old days.
Right, but what I'm getting at, were they subject to the cutout relay points sticking, like the generator regulators were? Just curious is all. That's kind of what it sounds like here, the symptoms he describes.
The wiring is a mess, it’s been messed numerous through the years by guys just like me. I don’t want to get too deep into it, but I might start with a new harness for the Alt.
Under the dash is a mess.
It probably isn’t all that difficult, just time consuming.
ill keep chipping away at it as time allows.This pic is just a sample of all the splices and unknowns.
I don’t see how this style of junction in the schematic.
I can identify with the wiring being a mess. My truck is similar. Old wiring which is brittle. Just my 2 cents worth, the Amp meter is useless. I sent mine in and had it converted to a volt meter. I prefer a volt meter since I get a better idea of what the battery is doing. I can't remember where I sent the amp-meter, but its probably on one of these forums. The distributor points were replaced with a petronix electronic ignition, so seeing that I replaced the old voltage regulator with an electronic one. Good luck tracking down the cause of the electrical issues.
This pic is just a sample of all the splices and unknowns.
I don’t see how this style of junction in the schematic.
That is an example of one of the excellent and reliable factory splices.
While we have found some over the years that were defective from the factory, yours looks like one of the good ones. Totally sealed in molded rubber/plastic stuff that seals the outside out.
Best to leave it mostly intact unless you're completely replacing all the wires. The Black w/yellow is the charging wire, not sure which branch the other Black wire runs off to, but one of the Yellow wires at least is most likely for the voltage regulator's "A" terminal.
The other Yellow one "might be" the horn relay power, but in my experience those have been separate wires with their own fusible link attached directly to the starter relay's battery side. So more likely it's for the ammeter, as you were thinking.
On the diagrams it should just show up as a splice. They don't usually indicate different styles in the diagrams. Just the wires and their colors.
Ok, sorry. I keep forgetting that we might be talking about a truck that originally did not have an ammeter.
Have you been able to look behind the dash, or take the cluster out to see if there is even any wiring to the ammeter and pressure gauge?
The diagram posted above by JEFFAFA is for a truck equipped with warning lights only. Which is wired differently at the voltage regulator. We were talking before of how this might be the reason your charging system has given you so much trouble.
It can work in either configuration, but it all has to be in the correct configuration. You can't mix it around, but must go by one of the two methods. Yours looks like it was wired like the diagram without an ammeter, so you could go back to that and try to see what happens.
That would be wired like this:
I - Green w/red to ignition switch. If you have a battery indicator lamp, this wire must have the lamp in series with it, or the lamp will not work.
A - Yellow to battery power all the time.
S - White w/black stator wire to the STA terminal on the alternator.
F - Orange field wire to the FLD terminal on the alternator.
If the ammeter remains disconnected (which is should be in this scenario) and the components are good, you should have output from the alternator.
i replaced the alternator and I have several regulators, I tried swapping them out and in The process I melted the small wire that runs to the regulator.
Just going back to one of your older posts. You said "the small wire" but what does that mean? There are five wires that run to your regulator. The four in the connector and one ground. The ground is the smallest one usually.
Is it the small black ground wire that melted? If so, that could lead us to a possible answer.
Maybe...
The small black wire that I melted was the ground from the Alt to the Reg case. It was encased in the harness that is on the Alt. and was previously not hooked up. I’m wondering if I hooked it up to the STA post on the Alt by accident?
The last time I put an Alt on the truck, I remember when I hooked the ground wire that is encased in the solid rubber “harness” to a post on the Alt there was a faint spark. I did not hook it up at that time figuring the spark was not a good sign. I drove it like that for a few years.
The ammeter does have wires going to it.
In the above pic, the solid black wire goes from Bat on the Alt to the battery side of the solenoid.
The solid yellow goes into the harness.
The yellow with green tracer goes to horn relay.
The green goes into harness.
The black with yellow tracer also goes into harness.
As I cut away the harness to look at the wires, it appears to be original except for a few splices that are at the ends of the run.
I dug into it deeper and I found that the harness was fine, other than the typical splices at the end of the run.
The fuse block is showing it’s age, the terminals are rusty, and the wires shorted out.
I remember putting on a new Alt when I first got the truck, that the ignition wiring was wrong, but worked.
So I left it as is.
Im thinking of doing this right, so I can have 1 nice older truck. Right now I have a 67 F100, 68 F100, 69 F350 dump, 60 F600 dump, and a 52 Marmon Herrington dump truck. None of them are restored.
The 60 will be sent down the road.
ill keep the others, but I’m going to have this 68 done right. I already have a rebuilt 390 in the shed, I’ll order a new harness and have the truck painted.
It will be something that I see the other guys drive!
American Autowire has a complete harness.
Anybody have a suggestion for other harness makers?
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