Posted by CGarbee on Monday, March 14, 2005 at 8:59AM :
In Reply to: M37 engine swap/24V charge posted by Jay Hitchcock on Sunday, March 13, 2005 at 10:38PM :
The way I am reading this is that you'd like to retain the 24volt electrical system in your truck. It can be done, however, you would have to convert the engine over to 24volts (coil, starter, and alternator). I know that you can get a 24volt alternator to bolt up easily, suspect that the other two will require a little bit more effort to source...
The other way is to retain the 12volt nature of your donor engine and convert the truck to match the engine. Either delete one battery or reconnect them in parallel so that you get 12volts out of the pair instead of 24volts. Of course, you will then have to swap out all the bulbs, change the turn signal flasher if you have a solid state one, and swap out any gauges that are electrically operated (temp, pressure, voltmeter, and fuel level if truck has stock setup).
If you do convert the truck remember that all the military accessories are designed for 24 volts so keep that in mind for future purchases and stencil "12 volt" next to the slave plug if you have one so that you don't accidently have somebody plug into you with a 24volt truck at a rally...
I do have some info on my website about converting a M37 to 12volts since I did it to mine when I installed the Cummins 4BT. See: http://www.garbee.net/~cabell/12voltconversion.htm
Of course, the CUCV uses dual alternators, two batteries, and has a 12/24 volt sytem in the truck that you might be able to get the manuals for and adopt to your rig, but boy, what an interesting setup it would be (I think that everyone that I have talked to has had problems with electrical stuff in those trucks at some point...).
Good luck.