Now I’m overcharging, My car is murdering voltage regulators Options

[VaccaRabite]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer3.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer3.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beer3.gif)
I’ve been driving my car all over for the past week or so.
Last weekend I noted that it was hard to start, and it stalled while pulling away in 1st once. Weird. Didn’t worry about it and finished my drive.

Got home and I checked voltage at the battery and I was making 18 volts, my VR had seemed to fail and I was pushing max voltage at the battery. Geeze, no wonder the car was hard to start with the alternator at max effort.

So, I’ve done the ground thing and they are all clean and good. In my undercharging thread I ran a 10ga wire from the alternator case to the body ground point near the relay board in the engine bay.

I’ve also checked all my collection of voltage regulators and all 5 of them, be they mechanical or solid state are now allowing the alternator to go full bore all the time.

This is with both the brand new battery and the PC680 gell cell race battery.

What do I look for now? Could I have broken the VRs by pulling them off the running car while chasing issues with the alternator last time? Or is this a car thing and I need to fix something else.

The car is essentially acting like I have D+ and DF jumped with D- left empty.

Zach

[DRPHIL914]

are the plug terminals from the alternator harness into the board misplaced??

Take off your relay board and take a look at the bottom. On my previous car the board had been repaired after the insulation failed and the repair material was slightly conductive, leading to exactly the same issue you have with overcharging. Good luck!

Just put a new relay board in it a few weeks ago while trying to find the cause of the undercharging issues.

Part of the reason why this is frustrating is that I have replaced or cleaned every part of the charging system over the past month.
*new alternator
*new alternator harness
*new relay board
*several new voltage regulars
*cleaned all the engine compartment grounds, and added a heavy ground from alternator case to the chassis.


Zach

FOUND IT!

The D- pin that the VR plugs into had pushed through the potting on the replacement board I got from Mark E. I was reaching around trying to feel for the chassis ground under the relay board when it poked me.

So now I have 2 relay boards I need to restore. Lol. At least I found it!

Zach

Glad to hear.

that's awesome!- I have been watching this closely with interest to see what it would be, looks like Doc and Jeff were both on the right track, in Jeff's previous post in item #2 he stated, double-triple check the board and its connections ! and their it was! I HATE electrical stuff but we make it more complicated than it is sometimes,- so Now you can go to the event I hope!! - Hope your mother is doing better so that you can as well.

Phil

[VaccaRabite]

that's awesome!- I have been watching this closely with interest to see what it would be, looks like Doc and Jeff were both on the right track, in Jeff's previous post in item #2 he stated, double-triple check the board and its connections ! and their it was! I HATE electrical stuff but we make it more complicated than it is sometimes,- so Now you can go to the event I hope!! - Hope your mother is doing better so that you can as well.

Phil

Yup. I assumed that just because the board was solid when I put it in last month, there was no way it could be the board now. I was chasing my tail over a 30 second fix. I was going to spend my lunch doing the tests the Jeff and Jerry prescribed, and found it while reaching around for the ground stud.

My brain literally went "no F*(KING way!"

Zach

[DRPHIL914]

that's awesome!- I have been watching this closely with interest to see what it would be, looks like Doc and Jeff were both on the right track, in Jeff's previous post in item #2 he stated, double-triple check the board and its connections ! and their it was! I HATE electrical stuff but we make it more complicated than it is sometimes,- so Now you can go to the event I hope!! - Hope your mother is doing better so that you can as well.

Phil

Yup. I assumed that just because the board was solid when I put it in last month, there was no way it could be the board now. I was chasing my tail over a 30 second fix. I was going to spend my lunch doing the tests the Jeff and Jerry prescribed, and found it while reaching around for the ground stud.

My brain literally went "no F*(KING way!"

Zach

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol-2.gif) I know the feeling! I did the same thing trying to get my car started after reassembly 2 weeks ago, and it ended up being the fuel pump ground! after 3 hours trouble shooting my connections and board!! BUT I learned a lot from that so it was super stressful but a great learning experience - I now know how to trouble shoot the whole board and all the relays and their connections - thanks to instructions from Jeff Bowlsby. ( however my mind thinks differently and when I have time I am going to rewrite those in an order that makes more sense to me, like not taking this plug and that plug out over and over again back and forth!)

Do you have a good board?? there was a guy here last year that sold some brand new boards he made, cant remember the name, but now I wish I had bought one!