Hot Rod Forum banner

I've burned up two alternators in a month

1K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  willys36@aol.com 
#1 ·
Have a SBC with EZ harness, GM alternator, pretty plain vanilla setup. We ran the car for a couple months and the battery started running down. Checked the alternator and the white wire connector on the alternator was melted. I put on a new plug and moved the red exciter wire from the hot lead on the alternator to the unused electric choke wire on the EZ harness (keyed 12V). Thought the lead might be over voltage being hooked directly to the alternator out. Had another chrome alternator in the shop so installed that one at the same time. That ran for less than a week and it fried too. It melted the white wire this time but just 3" back to the blue wire splice I used to install it. The rest of thst wire was fine. I took the splice apart and the end farthest from the alternator was blue on the very tip but clean copper the rest of the way. Almost looks like a bad crimp? I got a repair kit and rebuilt the first one and found the internal regulator fried and one diode out, the windings were fine, no sign of other problems.

Anyone have any ideas why I am burning the idiot light lead and internal regulator?

My thoughts;

1) bad crimp on the white wire connector causing high impedence in that circuit? Doesn't make sense 'cause the circuit is designed to have resisitance in it (light bulb).

2) run down battery requiring the alternator to recharge it and in our 100F summer weather overheating the regulator?

3) other?

Thanx in advance for the help!
 
See less See more
#2 ·
I had a very simular problem........ It ended up that I had mistakenly mixed up the exciter and sense leads on the alt plug...... I just knew I had them correct, but after a cont test....nope I had reversed them. I corrected the problem and the new alt has run flawlessly for over a year now
 
#4 ·
Did you get anywhere on this?

Couple of questions: What amperage alternator and what is this crimp you speak of?

Poor crimps on high power circuits can lead excess heat and corrosion causing failure at the crimp point. If the crimp is bad enough to cause a voltage drop across it, moving your exciter wire to the choke would have only made the problem worse. The alt would push it's output voltage higher to make the voltage from the dash 12v. Possible burning out the alt faster that way?
 
#5 ·
We checked the system and found no problems. Kitted one of the alternators and it has been running fine. I think it was a combination of a run-down battery and good old Bakersfield 105F summer that was too much heat load on the units trying to recharge an almost dead battery. Keep my fingers X'd!

Now our problem is a 'blown' engine. Troy fired it up last week and it literally exploded - spark set off explosive mixture in the crank case and he blew out the valve cover gaskets, belled the valve covers, probably belled the oil pan. I was hoping beyond hope the blowby we were experiencing would mend but I think we have a hole in a piston due to hitting the valves. After we rebuilt the engine we broke pushrods on all the cylinders. Turns out I thought he timed the cam and he thought I did. We hadn't, it was ~15deg out. We pulled the heads, had them gone over replaced a couple bent valves and put it all back together. We have had not-right engine problems ever since - low power, hard starting, excessive crankcase blowby. This explosion tells me we have a cracked piston.

Out comes the engine again for a tear down parts inspection and build up. We are getting so good taking the enginge out, working on it, and getting it back in the car, I want to do a run against a Top Fuel team to see if we can beat them!!!!!

Ain't hot rodding fun?
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top