The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay new alternator?

alright so i recently got back from school in NC and am now home in MD and with my truck once again . so i get back and soon find out that my battery stays dead even after jumpstarting the truck. basically i would jumpstart it, run it for about 20-30 minutes and then park it and it wouldnt restart after running for that long, it was completely dead. so i asked around and decided to buy a new battery. i drove to sears and bought a new die hard battery, installed it and the thing ran like a champ for the past week and a half until today...i went to start it this morning and it seemed like it had a weak charge and then drove it a little bit, parked, and then went to restart it and it had a little bit of juice left, but not enough to start it. so im thinking its the alternator now so im basically trying to figure out what you guys think about the problem, and if i need a new alternator which brands/types to look at. thanks.

Patrick,

My favorite auto retailer is Carquest. They have a good warranty on their electrical items, and are usually 'hometown', knowledgeable and friendly. I think they use pretty good rebuilders for their alternators...maybe to their benchmarks.

Keep in mind a alternator cannot and should not be expected to recharge a dead battery. You will find a slip in with your new item that will point this out.

It is highly possible that your battery was old and that is why it failed. When you jumped the rig, then asked the alternator to charge the dead battery, it might have been the last straw for it, hence the now bum alternator.

Unless you have lots of add on electrical stuff, a fairly standard 60 amp alternator should work fine. See what the prices run and don't get one too huge and expensive when you don't really need it.

These are all personal opinions, other folks will have more to say on this for sure. Good luck.

Stuart

okay cool thanks for the help. i think the cells in the battery i had in it before were probably bad because its been sitting here at my house for 7 or 8 months not being driven (i was at school in NC since august), so thats why i figured it was the battery after it continually wouldnt charge. anyway, i will be running out to get a new alternator tomorrow hopefully. thanks for the help i appreciate it.

Patrick,

I must have missed taking my meds. I think your '63 uses the old 10DN alternator. This means you have a external voltage regulator mounted on the firewall.

Unless you are trying to keep your rig bone stock, now would be the time to switch to a 10SI, or internally regulated alternator. This style is probably easier to find and cheaper too.

Using a internally regulated unit would mean you can do a tiny bit of wiring juggling and be done with the voltage regulator mounted on the firewall. This would be a real wise move.

Stuart

Why not have the charging system checked before throwing money at it? If it's the regulator you'll be replacing a good alternator for naught. You may have already replaced a good battery that was only discharged.

I would go with the 10si. It is about $35 at O'reilly's and to keep the stock look just run a wire from the bat terminal of the alternator to the bat terminal of the regulator and disregard the other regulator wires. This makes the regualutor into a junction. Run the excitor wire to the ignition switch and if it ever goes bad again then you have a life time warranty.

automarc- what kind of wiring juggling would i be doing? just removing the regulator and running wires straight to wherever they're supposed to go or what?

Patrick,

It's a simple procedure taken care of right at the old voltage regulator. Two of the old wires are taped up and not used and two others are connected to wires that are utilized from the old 10DN unit. So simple even the Geico caveman could do it!

Stuart

i think someone must have previously converted it as i dont see any type of voltage regulator on the firewall. i just see wires coming out of the alternator and then they are run up towards the front of the truck and then i can follow this black wire all the way to the battery terminals.

on a crazier note, i just tried to jumpstart it to do a test i was told about to see if the alternator was still good. apparently while its running the alternator should be magnetic so i was gona just place a screwdriver near it and see if it was magnetic. anyway, i go to put on the jumper cables and the last negative terminal i connect is sparking like crazy and i couldnt figure out why. for some reason i couldnt remember at the time, even though i normally do, that the bozo who previously owned the truck put a red wire on the negative terminal and black wire on the positive terminal. i had hooked the jumpers up incorrectly on my truck!! so i walked into my shed to grab my toolbox and a screwdriver and when i came back out there were sparks, fire and smoke coming from both batterys and the actual jumper cables were beginning to melt. i freaked out and called my dad and frantically ran to get the hose and then thought to myself "hmmm water and electricity, probably not the best plan". dad told me to put some towels over the areas where it was smoking and he'd be there in a minute. by the time he got here i had covered up the burning places and cut off the vehicle i was jumping with. he later told me the smart thing to do would have been to grab a stick and use it to knock the cables off the battery. anyway, just a crazy crazy thing and i feel like such an idiot haha hopefully this wont happen again im going to advance auto right now to get a BLACK battery cable to replace the red one and that way both cables are black and i'll be forced to look at the battery to be sure im hooking them up correctly. bring on the flaming for my dumb move too haha.

Patrick,

Bummer dude! If you still have a voltage regulator left after the conflagration, it might be located on one side of the radiator support frame up front. Good luck with the project.

Stuart

yeah so i hooked up the new alternator from advance auto and everything works great. thanks for all the help and support automarc. quick question though, there was a ground wire coming off the negative battery terminal going to the frame. my dad told me that as long as you have the positive wire going to the starter and the negative hooked up to the engine, you dont need the one hooked up to the frame and that he had never seen it before and so we took it off. i heard from someone after we had done it that we should have left it on. i still have the wire so i can put it back on but just didnt know whether or not we did the right thing. also my head unit now has no power? could this be from the near disaster i had with the jumper cable mix up or possibly because i took that ground wire to the frame off??

It could be from either. Put the ground wire back on and see if it makes a difference. It may also affect your lights/turn signals without the ground to the frame. Good luck.
Jeff

Patrick,

I'm not sure what a 'head unit' is. Is this the gauge cluster. Doesn't your truck have a fuse box...have you checked all the fuses? I would do as Jeff recommends and put any ground wire back for sure.

Stuart

head unit = radio/stereo

and you can never have to many grounds, well maybe if it starts to look like a rats nest, but strange things happen when there arn't enough grounds or loose/corroded grounds. On my 52 I have a ground going from the battery to the engine, which then goes to each frame rail, another going from the battery to a bolt on the cab mount(cab side), another ground going from the engine to the cab, and a ground going from the frame to the front sheet metal.