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68 Buick Skylark Sudden electrical failure yet car starts

5K views 35 replies 5 participants last post by  pdmracing 
#1 ·
I was getting a 68 skylark ready for delivery, yesterday did a saftey check of everything wipers light blinkers heater everything worked.

Today hooking up the final ac duct work under the dash and after buttoned it up started it up, fine turned on ac compressor kicked in , turned fan on , nothing, turned wipers on nothing , headlights nada??? fuses look good.

when I turned key on on, gen and oil warning lites lit up. Then I heard a groaning from voltage regulator, which is fairly new, it sounded like a flasher, I checked the emergency flasher on column and it was on.

Where do I check next? could I have knocked something loose I am in shock! no pun intended!
 
#34 ·
The best thing I ever did for my Camaro before I did a complete re-wire was to eliminate the external regulator and replace it with a internal regulated Alt. It's very easy to do. Basically you take the wires from the ext reg and jumper them together and install a new alt, replace the pig tail, add an additional wire and you're done.
 

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#35 ·
The saga continues, I swapped out alternator with a known good one, found the neutral safety switch was loose so the no start problems are gone, The gen lite & a strange groan happens at aprox 1250 rpm up or down and the gen light flashes at that time. If I hold it there it the gen lite will stay on dimly and the groan continues.
we pinpointed the groan to the voltage regulator humming. I drove it over to a friends Bosch shop that specializes in elec problems. he call this morning and they found that at that RPM the Voltage is 18V for that specific RPM causing the humm from regulator, they are tracing resistance now . He suspect the ignition switch but I cant find one anywhere.

I thing the one wire is my solution
 
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