Alternator Not Charging Battery?

[gadget73]

What terminal is the green/red going to? It should be on the I terminal.

[july7543]

Out from the I terminal is the black and orange wire. It goes to the aforementioned coupler that connects it to a black wire.(That leads into the along with the R/LG wire) Is it possible that this black and R/LG wire are switched and the R/LG wire should be connected? I think that this may fix the problem.

[gadget73]

Disclaimer: I don't have an 89 manual to reference, this comes from my 86 book which ought to be the same.

according to what I have here, the orange/light blue should go from F on the regulator to Fld on the alternator
white/black goes from S on the reg to Sta or Stator on the alternator
light green/red goes to I on the alternator, and from there goes to the idiot light (no black wire at all)
yellow/white goes from A on the regulator through a fuse link to the battery. Its also got the little condensor dealie on that wire.

I'm thinking there is either something unusual with your wiring, or maybe its to do with the Instaclear windshield wiring. I know that interfaces with the alternator somehow, but I don't actually know the details on that.

[85crownHPP]

If it was a dealer added option, maybe the technician was hung over that morning... lol

[july7543]

It seems that when I ground out the light green/red wire. The amp light kicks on at startup but will stay on. I need to get my multimeter back and verify if that is for good reason or not. In any case. I've attached a summary of the what kind of wiring I have going on.

[july7543]

Can anyone tell me what color of wire they have coming from their external voltage regulator from the I (Closest to Engine) terminal. The Hayne's wiring diagram suggests that the voltage regulator determines when to ground this wire out and that the voltage relative to ground is always supplied to the Amp light. Does this sound correct?

[july7543]

Strike that previous thought on the purpose of the Green/Red Wire. From what I can gather. The Amp light works this way. To one side of the light, battery voltage is supplied. To the other side of the light, alternator voltage is supplied. Thus, no current flows. When ignition is turned on, there is no alternator voltage present so current flows through the light due to the voltage difference relative to ground. When the alternator fires up, there is no relative voltage so no current flows keeping the light unlit. In my case, the LG/R wire is not connected to the voltage regulator so the light will no illuminate under any circumstances.

My thought is that it needs to be wired into the voltage regulator. I am not sure what the black wire is for but it doesn't appear to be a ground. I will go ahead and check to see if there is voltage at the I terminal if there there is, I will wire the LG/R wire into there. If there is no voltage, I can only assume that both of my voltage regulators (I've swapped in the OEM one for testing) are bad.

Can anyone check if their I terminal has voltage at that location?

[85crownHPP]

I think you're right... Ive been monkeying with the wiring on my 85 (which was externally regulated) during the 3G swap, everything fron the alternator to the regulator is sitting in my basement.
While probing around I did read power on that green/red wire, and it does go to the 'I' terminal on the regulator. I also noticed that this voltage had a load on it already, because it didnt short my meter when i grounded it Evidently you also need this to charge, so it looks like you solved your problem!

[july7543]

Well, it looks like I haven't solve things entirely yet. It appears that I always have voltage at the regulator I terminal (Ignition on or runnning) and as a result the light won't light. Even when I took the alternator voltage away it didn't light. I'm going to study the wiring further. Any thoughts?

[86VickyLX]

Those idiot lights are weird. I have seen myself the weirdness of the light. Get this, a new battery for an '88 Grand Marquis, right, light comes on in run position, with engine off, with engine on, the light stays off, but the alternator did not charge. This alternator zapped the battery of basically all of it's power to the point no lights came on in the car. The light was never on as the car was running, even though there was no charge from the alternator.

[Le Grand Marquis]

I got the same light problem and more....hope there's a light at the end of the tunnel !

[1987cp]

I may start posting this trio of pics every time I see a thread on alternator problems. This is *hopefully* all you really need to know about 1G, 2G, and 3G charging systems - if your wiring duplicates the corresponding one of these circuits in function, the problem is almost certainly in one of your components. Dash lights are optional - it works just as well to run your green wire straight to any ignition-hot source.

[86VickyLX]

it works just as well to run your green wire straight to any ignition-hot source.

I thought I'd stress this point, because some people think that the wire doesn't need to have power going to it.

[gadget73]

I've done the straight ignition hot thing before. it does indeed work fine. The idiot light is only important in that it completes the circuit. If you give it power directly with no idiot light, it still works fine.

[1987cp]

Somewhat irrelevant, but I made a much nicer 1G diagram a couple weeks ago. I didn't include the alt/regulator guts on this one like the nice RJM diagrams have:

[1987cp]

Correction: Noticed the labels on the regulator in my modified 1G diagram didn't match up, so I removed the labels. The wires are in the same order as in the manual, so with luck that should be good enough.