Hi everyone,

Ok, new problem with my 70 Elky. The old voltage regulator seemed to have puked causing an over charging of the battery at a whopping 16 volts.! ! I picked up a new voltage regulator from Pep Boys and replaced it now charging the battery at low 12's. The other day the battery wouldnt start the car so I jumped it with one of those booster boxes and then checked the voltage coming from the hot wire on the back of the alternator figuring the voltage regulator was just replaced and should be ok. The voltage at the stud on the back of the alternator was only 11.07 v which obviously wasnt charging the battery. I brought the alt. to a local starter / alternator rebuilder who rebuilt the thing and said there was a flat washer that was inside the alt which broke one of the wires on the strator field. Now I reinstalled it and it is charging at only 12.28 volts. To me that seems to be low so I called him back and said what was happening. He said that the voltage reg. is probably bad again from the washer shorting out inside the alternator. Is this right? How can I rule out the alt. or voltage reg to be the problem?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

bump. anyone????

Well it sounds like it was the replacement voltage regulator. Your battery should (key word there, should) be getting anywhere from 13.5 volts to a little over 14 volts above idle. If the voltage regulator was keeping it down too low then your battery might not have had enough juice to kick your engine over if was only seeing low 12v the entire time.

By the time it's all over with I'm going to have nothing less than all new 4 gauge or 1/0 in my engine bay (1/0 will be for the ground - stereo reasons), and new H/O alt of probably 170 amps or so.