|
|
Posted by Chris Case @ San Diego on Friday, February 15, 2008 at 19:39:45 :
In Reply to: 3 wire alternator question posted by Galen on Friday, February 15, 2008 at 10:54:24 :
Initially, I had the white wire hooked to the ign. Worked fine that way, but the truck kept haveing surging probs. I kept swapping coils, before I found out it was a bad connector at the coil. Apparently, it had just enough resistance to keep the juice that back-feeds through the white wire, from running the engine. The resistance was enough to make it surge too. So I finely find and fix the bad coonector, start it up, runs fine, but won't shut off. AHA! Now I need to put the idjiot light in. But for now, I'll unhook the white wire to shut off the motor. Then I restart, and everything runs fine, alt puts out good.
That white wire is supposed to run an 'exciter' circuit. It uses the resisted juice through the idjiot light bulb just to get the field excited and get the alt started alternatoring. Apparently, generators have enough residual magnetism so they don't need it. Alternators don't supposed to. But also apparently, my old junk yard alt has enough old invested residuals coming in to live on- it works just fine without the white wire hooked to anything. It is just dangling in my cab. Ammeter is proof that it works.
My ammeter is one that goes up to 50 A. Works fine on the 65a alt.
Follow Ups: