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Electrical woes continue. Help?

Latest: The alternator appears to be undercharging or not charging at all... I have a dash voltmeter that had been reading around 14-14.5 volts but a few days ago I noticed it was sitting right at 12 volts while driving down the road. After driving it like this a couple of days I could tell the battery was getting low because of how slowly the engine would turn over when I was starting it. I verified with a voltmeter that I was only getting right at 12 volts at the battery with the Jeep running. I took it to AutoZone and they checked the battery and said it was ok, then checked the alternator and said it was dead. I bought another alternator for it. Got home and went to disconnect the wires from the old alternator when I found one of them completely broken. I thought that was cool and that I'd just splice it and fix it....and return the new alternator...but no... No change after splicing that wire. So I figured maybe I'd somehow burned up my old alternator running it with that wire disconnected... So I removed the old alternator and put in the new one. Now there were only two wires on the back of the alternator. One is a thick red wire which runs to the positive terminal of the battery and the other is a thin green wire (the one that was broken before) that runs to the voltage regulator. I wonder if there should be a third one? Anyway, I got out my Haynes manual and followed their directions. I got to the point where it said "If no fault is found (and none had been up until this point), disconnect the voltage regulator wires and connect one lead of an ohmmeter to the F terminal and the other to a good ground... The ohmmeter should indicate 4-250 ohms. Less than 4 ohms indicates a short.....etc, etc. OK, I measured exactly 0 ohms, same reading I get if I short the ohmmeter leads together so it looks like I have a short. The manual says "If the reading is not within the specs, the alternator should be replaced or overhauled..." Well, I just did replace it and would like to believe that it's not faulty. I won't rule that out but... I checked all of the surrounding wiring and it looks um...intact. It's been hacked into a few times but I resoldered one connection and rewrapped a couple of connections and checked for 0 ohms across several lengths of it and it looks ok. Any ideas? Thank you.

-- Travis

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meek shall inherit the earth. After I'm finished with it.:wq!

Reply to
travis
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Is the voltage regulator separate or built into the alternator? Try reversing the ohm meter leads (use low ohm scale)... if it's still zero, I would think that's bad. Take it back have them check it anyway just to rule that out.

-- JimG

80' CJ-7 258 CID 35" BFG MT on 15x10 Centerlines D44 Rear, Dana 30 Front. SOA 4.56 Gears, LockRight F&R Dana 300 w/4:1 & Currie twin sticks Warn X8000i w/ dual batteries
Reply to
JimG

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 16:35:45 GMT, "JimG" shared the following:

It's separate. But the tests I did per the Haynes manual say the alternator is faulty. ? You mean take it back and have them check the alternator again? Or the voltage regulator? Does AutoZone test your voltage regulator? I hope it was just the regulator that was bad since that would take all of 2 minutes to swap out. :-) I'm just concerned because of what I found by following the step-by-step instructions in the Haynes manual.

-- Travis

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meek shall inherit the earth. After I'm finished with it.:wq!

Reply to
travis

Take the alternator back... I don't think they check the regulator. If the alternator checks OK get the regulator while your there. Swap them leads... make sure your on low ohm scale.

JimG

Reply to
JimG

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 16:53:21 GMT, "JimG" shared the following:

Check out the wiring I'm dealing with:

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don't really have a "low scale" on my meter:
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's a "hum dinger" meter, huh? :-)

-- Travis

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meek shall inherit the earth. After I'm finished with it.:wq!

Reply to
travis

"hum dinger" fo sho! Be tuff to read 4 ohms with that one... alternator is probably OK... go get a regulator. JMHO

JimG

Reply to
JimG

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 17:17:40 GMT, "JimG" shared the following:

I just checked and AutoZone has a regulator for $9.89 so I may just do that. Yeah, very tough to be sure that it's reading 0 ohms for real since it's a 1K scale. 4 ohms would move the needle about 1/00th of an inch or so. :-)

-- Travis

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meek shall inherit the earth. After I'm finished with it.:wq!

Reply to
travis

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 12:25:03 -0500, travis shared the following:

CHA CHING!!! Went by AutoZone and their one regulator they had in stock was "broken in the box." Not sure how she could look at it and tell... Anyway, left there and went to Pep Boys. They wanted $26 for a voltage regulator. Left, went to Advance Auto, they had one in stock for $9 and change. Came home, swapped it out, fired up Jeep, voltage jumped right up to a little over 14 V on the voltmeter gauge on the dash just like it did before the trouble started. Thanks to everyone who offered me help on this problem. Time to go try out that winch now... ;-D

mini rant: WTF is up with parts stores around here?!?!? I'm used to buying most of my car parts online for that old VW I worked on so much. I might have to start doing that for the Jeep, too. I get sick of running around looking for parts for it. Today while I was out, I asked all 3 stores if they had a distributor cap or rotor for my Jeep. Of the 3 stores, *one* of them had a rotor in stock. So now I have plugs and a rotor, still need a cap... maybe within the next few weeks one of the stores around here will get a cap in stock. *sigh* Or maybe I'll just order a couple of caps and rotors and plugs online and put them away for when I need them. The auto parts stores near me SUCK-DIDDLY-UCK!!! :-/

-- Travis

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meek shall inherit the earth. After I'm finished with it.:wq!

Reply to
travis

Travis, I don't remember what engine you said you have in your CJ, but you might want to look into the TFI upgrade. I installed this on my Grand Wagoneer with an AMC 360 and it made a world of difference in smooth idle and application of power. It's a *whole* lot cheaper than the HEI upgrade, too.

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is mainly for the AMC V8s, but you might find useful information here.
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is a more general article and has a lot of good information and ideas.This article is referenced in the one above, too.

Reply to
TJim

Allll RIGHT! JimG

Reply to
JimG

Hey, thats my jeep wiring....and my multi-meter.....that's my rug too!

Reply to
HomeBrewer

You gents are both playing russian roulette with your vehicle's electronics then...

Those cheap VOM's are 'extremely' dangerous to use around any CMOS electronic chips.

They can put too much load on the circuit and just fry the chips.

Basically if your fancy regulator with modern electronics in it wasn't dead 'before' you started testing, it could sure be dead after you finished.

Same goes for test lights, they are also a big no no around modern electronics. The chips are 3-5 volts. They 'really' don't like a 12 volt load put to them.

Even a cheap $5.00 DMM (digital) meter works fine and is 'safe'.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's

HomeBrewer wrote:

Reply to
Mike Romain

On Sat, 08 Nov 2003 20:42:23 GMT, "HomeBrewer" shared the following:

Oh? Hey, your multi-meter sucks. heh heh :-)

-- Travis

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meek shall inherit the earth. After I'm finished with it.:wq!

Reply to
travis

travis did pass the time by typing:

neener

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My rug also sucks. :( But then again if it was new I couldn't keep parts stacked in the corner. :)

Reply to
DougW

Good to hear, was your original alternator dead also or was it good?

Nelson

89YJ
Reply to
Nelson

On Sat, 8 Nov 2003 17:20:49 -0500, "Nelson" shared the following:

I suspect it was good, but have no way of telling now since I traded it in as a core on the replacement. :-/ If I have a similar problem in the future then I guess I'll buy a voltage regulator first and if that doesn't solve the problem then I'll return it or keep it for a spare and then consider replacing the alternator. Or... I'll just not turn in my old alternator to get the core fee refunded until I'm sure that replacing the alternator fixes the problem.

-- Travis

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meek shall inherit the earth. After I'm finished with it.:wq!

Reply to
travis

On Sat, 8 Nov 2003 14:18:46 -0500, "TJim" shared the following:

'76 304 V8. Thanks for the links. :-)

but you might

-- Travis

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meek shall inherit the earth. After I'm finished with it.:wq!

Reply to
travis

There isn't much that can go wrong with an alternator. Brushes, bearings, diodes, windings, I guess that's about it. A cheap multimeter and a good pair or eyes and ears can check all of these. A little knowledge saves a lot of money. "Back on the farm" we had to be able to swear up and down that an alternator was bad before the boss would OK the trip to town to get a rebuilt unit. I could preach to you some more if you would like...

Earle

Reply to
Earle Horton

On Sat, 8 Nov 2003 15:39:08 -0700, "Earle Horton" shared the following:

Well... I started out on the wrong foot by trusting AutoZone when they said my alternator was bad. After replacing the alternator and still having the same problem, I read my manual and used my cheap multimeter my good pair of eyes (courtesy of LASIK) and my not-so-great ears and from what I read in my manual and observed on my cheap multimeter, all indications were that the alternator was still bad. I checked all of the associated wiring closely and it was fine as far as I could tell. That's when I quit "following the rules" and just did the obvious. (replace the only part aside from the battery left in the equation...and I was pretty dang sure it wasn't the battery since I could let it "rest" and it would recover enough to restart the Jeep again.) The only thing I think I should have done differently is to closely inspect the wiring before anything else. In this case I don't think it would have made a difference.

Fortunately the alternator was only about $40 so it wasn't such a bad thing this time.

-- Travis

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meek shall inherit the earth. After I'm finished with it.:wq!

Reply to
travis

Reply to
L.W.(ßill)

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