Anyone running an upgraded heavy duty 300amp alternator, with the stock harness?

I had to drill the eye out a little on the harness clamp to get it on my new alternator.

Seems to be running good, but I'm a little worried about that big juice going through that stock harness.

 

Kwikkordead will be around sometime to show you what he did to his. He ran a cable from the alternator output to the battery so the juice didnt have to go through the stock harness.

 

Correction.....make that an upgrade to a heavy duty 200 amp Alternator!

 

Yeah it would be pretty useless trying to shove 200 amps through a 100 amp fusable link.
Did you see that other thread where I posted the picture with the cables?

 

This pic?

https://www.ford-trucks.com/user_gal...photoid=132524

If yes, and....

Is this statement still true, with a 200amp Alternator putting out that extra juice through the stock harness?<!-- KEN: 1-13-2007: show 300x250 ad-block to non-Club FTE users in the 1st post of every page --><!-- / Ken, end of hack -->

 

I just redid mine with 4GU to each battery terminal, and 4GU from the alt case to ground.

 

Did you disconnect the stock harness, or piggy-back over it?

Did you put a fuse into your setup?

 

Disconnected it and taped, just for testing.

No fuse yet. Will use a fuse link when finished.

 

Ok!


I just ordered a kit, as shown in link....

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/FORD-...QQcmdZViewItem

...apparently, the kit does not have a ground wire set-up, but I will add one if the consensus is, that it is needed.

 

I'd crimp the ends on for free too with that kind of shipping markup WOW!

 

does a person really need a fusabile link from the alt to the battery?

 

Only if a diode shorts in the alternator's pack.

But, if you have 4 gauge wire to the battery, the shorted diode (or an internal wire real close to it) will become a fuse anyway!

At the instant the diode shorted, the alternator was already toast! ;-))

Pop

 

One thing to remember is that electricity will always take the easiest path to ground. That's one of the reasons that I like doing this so much because it all the charging load from the alternator to the battery gets shifted to the piggyback wiring. If you run your battery low for some reason and the alternator kicks on full for a while you will find that only about 10-20 amps will be going through the truck's charge wire and all the rest will be going through the piggyback, straight to the battery.
10-15 years ago when I was working on a LOT of the mid 1980's VW, they had some of the crummiest conductors in the alternator wiring. I have this load tester that I bought that draws 300 amps. Basically it's a box with an oven element in it with a big switch. I would hook the car up to the analyzer with the amp lead on the alternator wire. Then I would connect that load tester to the battery and start the engine. At 3000 rpm I would find that with every accessory turned on the charge voltage would drop off to below 13 volts at the battery and this was with a 90 amp alternator. The load was headlights on high beam, AC on with the fan set high, rear defrost, wipers on high and radio on. The voltage at the alternator would still be 14 v, but the wiring was causing a huge voltage drop and at the end of a long wet commute here in Seattle the customer's car would have a dead battery, requiring a jump.
The only thing that I had to do was to install this shunt wiring between the alternator and the battery and that would eliminate the voltage drop. I could turn everything on and the charge voltage would be restored at the battery posts. The only time it would drop off was when engine rpm was too low to spin the alternator fast enough to keep up.
The final test at the end of the job was to take that big load tester and see that the alternator was able to generate enough amps. Most of the 90 amp alternators would peak out at around 105 amps and with that final test I knew that the problem was solved. Any less and I would call the customer back and report the findings and they usually ok'ed a new alt and battery.
Not one of those jobs ever came back with a complaint about a dead battery, it was a silver bullet job.
So that's why I do this now, it just seems like a lot of manufacturing is done these days with not a lot of margin for error and I am a big fan of overkill.

 

I guess that's why VW never put a fuse on thier charge wire. Why bother???

 

Makes good sense. Seems I wasted $44 buying the kit with the fuse, when I could have just bought some 4Ga.

But, on the plus side I learned something!!

Thanks for the info, guys.