They make a pretty reliable solar battery tender that you might try in your pole building. It is a PTA carrying batteries around.

 

So, Bob.......??????????

Are you just avoiding the electrical troubleshooting?

It's a pain - I know.

Your problem is EXACTLY why when I rewired (and I know you like things all "stock ticky do") I put every electrical component on its own fuse. It isolates every circuit and elliminates these types of possible compound faults. (just mention that for the guys who may be thingking about rewiring) I tmakes troubleshooting a breeze.

 

No, I'm not avoiding but I've been busy with kid things the last two nights, one kid is taking a night time driver's ed course (read more money, more money, more money) and my wife had other things to do. Then the oldest had his first baseball game last night. I will be working on it over the week end. Be sure that I will post as soon as I see a charge and the problem is fixed.

 

long shot but do you have a ballast resistor inline?usually they fail but once in a while the coils cool and run again not sure if this will help but maybe julie

 

A virtual Frostie for everyone!

I think I finally found the problem, with a whole lotta help from all you members of the board. After waiting a couple of days doing family stuff I was able to work on the panel today. The suggestions about the circuit breaker from you were the trick.

Today when I went out to the truck the first thing I did was start it up. Started right up. I ran it for about five minute, or so and then turned it off. I tried to start it and it wouldn't start. I then decided to change the light switch, the shaft kept pulling all the way out of the switch so I dug up a good one from my "Junk" (as my wife calls it) and installed it. The lights didn't work, they did when I had the truck running. The truck still wouldn't start with the ignition switch but it would fire right off if I hot wired it so I took another look at the wiring diagram I have posted a few posts back to take a look at the circuit. The headlights and the ignition switch both have the top circuit breaker in their circuit, just like Julie mentioned. I checked the terminal fastened to the starter solenoid, made sure the connection was clean. Then I checked the circuit breaker. Since I don't have the radio grill on it's fairly easy to reach through and unscrew the nuts on the back of the circuit breakers. I pulled all four wires off, the wire connections didn't look bad but I cleaned them up anyways. As I was tightening the last nut I kind of stuck as much of my head through the speaker hole that I could just to try to take a look at the back side of the circuit breaker and from a side angle view I thought I saw a little scorching on the back of the two circuit breakers. I was planning to replace the circuit breakers but wanted to see if just cleaning the connections would do any good. When I saw the scorching I decided to climb under the dash and pull the circuit breakers. I found the the jumper bar was pretty burnt up and corroded. It must have gotten hot because of a dirty or bad connection or maybe something internal. Again, I found a set of breakers in my "Junk". After I replaced the circuit breakers the truck fired right up, the headlights lit without flickering and the ampmeter registered a charge, a very noticeable one.

Again, thanks a lot everyone. I don't know if I would have connected this all to the circuit breaker, or at least it would have taken me a lot longer, without your help. I was too focused on the voltage regulator to look away from the charging circuit.

Now I just have to get my ampmeter to stop jumping back and forth when I'm driving down the road.

 

I'd suggest putting a relay into the headlight circuit along with an inline blade type fuse and feed the power right off the battery so the headlight's power is not running thru the OEM circuit breakers. It may very well be that modern bulbs draw significantly more current than they did 60 years ago. They sure are much brighter. The biggest reason a circuit breaker was used rather than a fuse was that if you "blew" the circuit breaker it would reset as soon as it cooled so you would at least have intermittent headlights. Today the headlight switches have a circuit breaker built into the switch case that is rated slightly less than the safety fuse for the same reason.

 

RV shops sell 12v circuit breakers very reasonably, in increments of 10, 15, 20, 30, and 50 amps. Lights should always be on c.b.'s. Glad you got 'er done!

 

remember that 6V uses twice the amperage of 12V for the same function so 1/2 the rated trip A of a 12V circuit breaker, i.e. a 12V 50A breaker is a 25A 6V circuit breaker.
Personally I don't have a problem using a fuse instead as long as it is in an easy to change location and you carry spares. I can pull off the road in the time it might take a circuit breaker to cool and reset, and change the fuse. If there is a serious enough problem to keep blowing fuses or popping circuit breakers, I'm going to do a roadside repair rather than keep driving with the headlights flashing on and off. The taillights should be on a separate fuse/circuit breaker from the headlights. DOT requires cars to have the dash lights and taillights on the same circuit so if the fuse blows you know it when the dash goes dark. If putting in new wiring/fuse panel I would also wire the front parking/driving lights on a separate circuit as well, so you could still have some front lights if the headlights went out.

 

Hey Bob, that's GREAT NEWS about the truck - it sounds like it's gonna be a great summer!

[quote=AXracer;7485761]remember that 6V uses twice the amperage of 12V for the same function so 1/2 the rated trip A of a 12V circuit breaker, i.e. a 12V 50A breaker is a 25A 6V circuit breaker.
quote]

Hmmmmmmm??? Hey AX would you accuse me of smokin' dope if I told you that I think from a protection standpoint, what you said above was backwards?

Your statement about using double the amperage at half the voltage to produce the same wattage is correct in all respects.

But,

CBs are designed to protect circuitry from being subjected to over amping. And on a constant voltage system, overamping produces excessive wattage in the wiring which is the heat that smoke checks it.

CBs trip from heat - to much wattage produced by too much amperage at the rated voltage.

So, protection is provided to trip with a given amperage because of the amperage wattage relationship, and it will do so only at the rated voltage. On a 6 volt system using a breaker designed to pop at 25 amps, it would allow that wiring to be subjected to 150 watts. So the order of magnitude of protection needed is 150 watts or less.

On a 6 volt system, a 12 volt breaker will allow twice its rated amps at half its rated voltage (to reach it's wattage trip value) and thus subject that system to 600 watts before it trips.

In order to protect that same circuit from over amping above 150 watts with a 6V25A breaker, a 12 volt breaker must be rated at 12.5 amps (not 50) and thus when it allows double the amps at half the volts or 25 amps at 6 volts it offeres the correct 150 watts of protection.

I know what I'm thinking but having a terrible time putting it into words.
Make sense? Am I AFU on this?

 

Watts the matter with me? You are indeed right again.
That's why I use nothing but 12V and a fuse panel!
Much less to confuse myself with...

 

My electrician son in law told about the "West Virginia" (W. VA.) equation: Watts=Volts x Amps.

I had lots of trouble remembering how to compute it but, since I learned the formula, I have had not trouble with figuring it out.

 

So - Who won?

 

LOL!!!

Hi AX! I'm usually very skeptical about adding to what you say because it is ALWAYS right on the money. You are one of about four people on the site who, first, when you say something, I just know to listen because I know I'm going to learn something and learn it right. This one time it just caused a little smoke in my brain I had to really think about why, then explaine it to make sense. I figured you'd come back with something that made complete sense and my thinking would have been wrong for all these years....

But that's why I'm here, to learn new things, correct the wrong things, and refine the skills!

I'm with you, I understand why folks like to keep stuff original - as a matter of class and pride. And Mr. Jones is another one of the folks that is in that four mentioned above (Ross too).

But I'm kind of no nonsense when it comes to electricity and wandering outside of a very tight set of lines. And that's why I'm so fussy when folks ask about harnesses, rewiring, or if adding this thing could me made to work. I'm with you, do it right, keep it simple!

PS. Bob won Penn Dick, his truck is working right now!

 

Julie, while your explanation may be valid for AC (alt Current) home-style c.b.'s, I've been told that DC c.b.'s are not particularly voltage sensitive, only current sensitive. They really have no way to sense Wattage. I have no way to test the theory, but looking at the innards of one, I tend to believe it. They are a glorified turn signal flasher, which as we all know are current sensitive.

I only use c.b.'s as a last-ditch measure or for the special case of lights. Fuses are the sure-fire (no pun intended) protection. (BTW, they are also current sensitive, not wattage sensitive.)

 

AFAIK DC CBs are bimetal switches like the thermostat on your livingroom wall. They get heated up and open the circuit, reset when they cool. I "buy" Julie's explanation since we need a source of heat to break the circuit, the CB cannot distinguish heat produced by lower A * higher V or higher A* lower V each converts to a certain amount of heat measured in Watts.

Aside, in fact checking, I found that Cooper makes circuit breakers that plug into standard ATC (blade type) fuse holders. Want to use a circuit breaker instead of a fuse? Just replace the fuse in the fuse panel or inline holder with a replacement circuit breaker.