External voltage regulator
 

I want to start by saying I am very inexperienced with electrical and I'm posting this for the purpose of someone telling me what I did wrong. My alternator was overcharging and both it and the battery tested good so I wired in an external regulator by cutting the wires that plug into the alternator and wiring them to the new regulator and one of them has another wire running to it from a keyed power source. That should've made it regulated and all that jazz but instead the alternator is just running full field and it's skipping the regulator entirely. Do you see where the problem is in what I did? I'm at a loss.

You might want to post this in the "after market electrical systems" forum section. Good luck

You should have done further checking to find your problem, as you have found the work around doesn't. Remove it and find the base of the problem, if your unable to do so seek out help to find the real issue.


It's not uncommon for things to check good when they really are not with electrical, it depends on how and who checked them so start over again.

Thanks Fred that's kind of where I'm at now just rechecking. I just recently cleaned and checked all the grounds and they were kosher, the battery tested good, the alternator tested good. That's what lead me to believe it was the vr. The wiring is correct according to all the tutorials I've seen. The only strange thing is that when I put my ohm meter on the ends of the wires that go into the plug on the back of the alternator, it's showing 2 ohms resistance when I would imagine those two wires shouldn't be connected in any way at all. Does that sound right?

Also I don't know how to move a thread to a different section, but if someone tells me how I can move this to aftermarket electrical. My bad.

Been a while since I've played with my jeeps alternator but I'm pretty sure the voltage regulator is just mounted to the back of the alts case. Why not just try replacing the factory alts vr? As far as the alt running full field, you might want to make sure wires aren't being crossed somewhere, I don't remember the exact method to force an alt to run full field but it has something to do with jumpering two terminals but that's only for testing purposes so my guess is something isn't wired right.

Moved for you. Lol.

Thanks outlaw. The vr from mid '90's and up is inside the computer so to replace it I'd have to replace the whole computer. I'm pretty sure I have it wired wrong somewhere or something inside the alternator is connected when it shouldn't be