The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay problem with a 1 wire atlernator

I swirched over to a 1 wire alternator on my 50 3100. I have installed a brand new EZ wiring 20 cicuit harness. The battery is also new. the alternator is charging but it seems to surge up then down. Also my voltmeter will peg out then come back down. The needle on my voltmeter pegs out so hard that it makes a clicking noise when it does. There is a rythum to the surges on the voltmeter. the alternator is a 100 amp alt so i also have a wire running to my stater with a 30 amp maxi fuse between the starter and alt. has anyone else run into this problem when swapping over to a 1 wire alt? If so how did you fix the problem? thanks for any help

The rythmic surging is probably caused by the amperage spiking as well as the voltage, resulting in a variable load on the engine. It sounds to me like an internal circuitry problem in the built-in voltage regulator. I'd suggest swapping the alternator for another unit and see if the spiking voltage goes away. It's very unlikely that the wiring will cause that type of voltage change.
Jerry

Thanks for the reply Jerry, the EZ wiring harness that I used came with a 30 amp maxi fuse. The fuse was not big enough for the alternator's output. I touched the maxi fuse and it was hotter then a fire cracker. So I then ran a straight wire from the alt to the battery and the surging stopped and the alt was charging perfectly. So I then put a 60 amp fusible link in between the wire I ran straight to the battery. And the alt is charging great now so now I have 2 wires actually running from the alt. One wire runs to the fuse panel as per the eZ wiring instructions. And the other runs to the battery. They do not tell you this in the EZ wiring instructions. The painless wiring instructions say to use a jumper wire from the alt to one side of the maxi fuse. But this also did not stop the voltmeter from pegging out. The only way i found was to run a heavy guage wire striaght to the battery, not to the starter's battery post. And i made sure to put a fuse between the battery and my alternator for safety sake.

Tracern1. Go to the Painless wiring site and see what they have to say about a 1 wire alt. I had to get a special wire harness for the one wire. Check out their tech site. very informative. Good luck.
Al V

APV60 thanks for the heads up on the site. I have already went to thier forum and basically they said the same thing as the manual. To run the 915 wire from the fuse block to the alt. Then run the 916 wire from the fuse panel to the 30 amp maxi fuse. Then run a jumper 960 wwire from the alt to the same side of the maxi fuse as the 916 wire. But that didn't help. The fix I found was to run a separate wire from the alt straight to the battery and put a 60 amp fusible link in between. I guess I could have swapped the 30 amp maxi fuse for the fusible link. But I already had all the wiring nice and tidy in wire loom and didn't want to go back and mess it all up. the alt really charges well now. I have heard a bunch of negative stuff about the 1 wire set up. But most of it was old threads. The 1 wire alternator they make now are suppose to be better. I guesss I will see how this oone works out. The engine has to be running at 600 tp 800 rpm before the alt starts charging so i don't have any issues with that becasue my sbc idles around there. the biggest thing i liked about it was no more volt regulator and extra wires to deal with.