Re: you can have alternators made


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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.9.37] on Thursday, November 29, 2012 at 16:08:46 :

In Reply to: Re: you can have alternators made posted by Jerry in Idaho [69.59.83.175] on Thursday, November 29, 2012 at 15:52:41 :

I agree, intermittent electrical problems can be very frustrating, and it seems like old dodges are particularly prone to them. I'm one who likes to identify the problem rather than just trying things and then hoping it's fixed, so if you suspect a bad ground to the alternator, I would put the voltmeter, as described, between the alternator case and the neg battery post, because that's where the electricity has to get back to eventually so you might as well check the whole path first. About a year ago, I was surprised to find that a weak charging problem on my '67 Chevy pickup was due to a bad ground between the alternator and the block. I actually measured over a volt between the alternator case and the block, and as I narrowed it down, the voltage drop was between the alternator case and the adjustment bracket. The end that bolted to the block was okay, but the end that clamped to the alternator was mechanically tight but wasn't making a good connection. I had flat washers on both sides of the bracket, so that was probably the problem. I cleaned things up and put in a star washer to make sure it would cut through any rust and paint, and it was fine. I would have probably hit on that eventually if I'd scraped and cleaned all the connections along the way, but by narrowing it down to the exact bad connection first, I was able to do a more permanent fix (star washer) rather than just cleaning it all and then having it eventually get rusty and dirty again and once again stop making good contact.



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