Well,as per the auto-electrician,s suggestion I ran a seperate ground from alternator case to frame,negative battery post to frame,cab to frame,cab to block,alternator case to block and frame to block,no difference. Where's the best place to tie the #2 wire in,to get the most useful reading? Now I'm wondering if I have a faulty connection on that wire thats messing with its reading of the output. What gets me is that this all used to work perfectly,but now it doesn't. The only changes I've made to the electrics since then is I had a pinched taillight wire I couldn't see,and pulled my lights switch out to find out why the lights were going off and on. Found what looks like a circuit breaker kinda thing on there that was cycling the lights. Found where the wire was pinched and put the light switch wires back on and re-installed the switch. I'm sure I got a couple of the wires in the wrong locations because the cab markers and taillights are on with the key switch and the dash lights don't work at all. I can't imagine the lighting problems having anything at all to do with the charging problem. At that time,something was killing the battery every night,and I couldn't find that problem. I DID find that unplugging the DA plug stopped the discharge,so I wired a big toggle switch into the wire from the plug to the battery. that stopped the discharge,everything worked fine,life was good. So far so good,but then the switch failed,so I temporarily connected the wires from it to each other. Now the battery doesn't go dead anymore but I get the charging wierdness. Could those 2 wires that went to the toggle switch be the problem? Maybe I just need to replace that wire with one piece that goes the same route as before I "modified" it.
BTW-I'd think the battery would get kinda hot with that much voltage going in,but it doesn't.And looking at the volt gauge in the dash,it shows 14 volts at idle,and about 14.8-15.0 revved up. Not quite as high as I thought I'd seen earlier.
Did I mention yet that I HATE WIRING?
Speed
