Electrical Fixed My Strange Charging Issue...

creektrack

Member
May 17, 2013
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I just wanted to enlighten everyone on an issue I just spent a week chasing on my 96 vert GT...

I did some suspension work and then all the sudden my alternator stopped charging...didn't make any sense to me...

So, I went through 6 alternators, put in a new battery, replaced both terminals, and checked every single fuse, even the fusible link wires at the fuse box...

Well, I finally narrowed it down to it being my gauge cluster, as I heard there is a 510 ohm resistor that has been known to go bad on rare occasion. ..well I pulled my cluster and this is what I found...
jeva2ubu.jpg


If you can see, one of the lines is burnt...not sure how it happened, but that line is the one that goes out to the green/red wire on the alternator, which is actually a signal wire to tell the alternator to turn on and charge the car, its not just to tell the battery gauge what the level of charge is, it's actually vital in whether or not the alternator will charge the vehicle...Here's a diagram...
y6ahyge2.jpg


So, to fix this, I called around to so many different places to find copper tape, and no one had any...well I noticed online a lot of people selling copper tape were using it for stained glass...so I called Hobby lobby and the had foil tape, which was copper...

So for $9.51 total, I bought a 56' roll of copper foil tape and an exacto knife...I then cut a small line of the tape and re-ran the connection, snaking it around like the original line, and low and behold, my car began to charge...

Just thought I would share my experience so that in the future, maybe this can help someone troublshoot their issue and get their car running again...
 
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Hey, im the exact same way, which is why I took the time to post this...I don't know how many times I searched for an issue, found it online, and then it never gets updated with a resolution. ..it irritates me even more when they come in and say they figured it out and don't elaborate. ..
 
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How in the heck did you figure this out? Stab in the dark? Also 56 feet of tape is a lot. :D

I just searched different terms related to the alternator and wiring and finally found where someone mentioned the 510 ohm resistor on the cluster...so when I pulled the cluster I immediately saw the burned section and at that time was hoping that this just had to be the reason...and after calling around to so many places I was glad to find so much, I could theoretically do the entire cluster...oh and it was 36 yards, so actually about 100 feet...

Heres a link to what I used...
http://shop.hobbylobby.com/products/3/16-copper-foiling-tape-182139/

3aru6e2a.jpg


I'll add this to the tech resources when i getaccess to a puter

Sounds good man...just glad I can potentially help someone in the future...to me, this is what these forums are all about, being able to share the wealth of knowledge and experience. ...
 
So the resistor is good...you just had a burnt connection? Is that the one that leads from the resistor around the dash light bulb holder that looks green in the pic? I'd wonder why it burnt in the 1st place. Something may have shorted out. You can test the resistor too.
 
Yeah everything was good, just the burnt connection that you can see in the pic...

I think it was because I was doing some suspension work that took 2 days, well I had the key in the "on" position, just enough so I could move the front wheels without the steering wheel locking...

So my only guess is that the low current just corroded the connection from 2 days of aitting there...

Like I said, it was super strange and took me about a week to track it down...