Anybody still living who knows old-school charging systems?

[blindsquirrel]

Nope, no load tester other than the stuff original to the car but the old alts couldn't even supply those minimal loads without draining the battery when they were all turned on. If my napkin-math is correct the loads wanted about 42 amps, old alts could only do around 40, that left 2 amps to be supplied by the battery.

Alvin, if this is/was a vehicle wiring issue of any kind how come it didn't work with two 10SI alternators but works great with the new CS144 using every bit of the same original wiring? The only thing changed is the alternator itself, a new 5/16 ring terminal crimped onto the end of the original 10GA charge wire(1) and a CS144 connector plugged into the original 2-pin connector with spade terminals(2).

The idiot light in the dash works, has always been working - on at key-on, off as soon as engine starts. The big 10GA sense wire that parallels the main charge wire is only there to bypass any voltage drop in the main charge wire. It always showed minimal voltage drop (it was checked), because that wire does not carry any load.

(1) the original was good, only changed because new alt is a M8 stud

(2) this is temporary, I wanted to prove the new one worked before chopping off the connector

[blindsquirrel]

The two 10SI's that caused this are Duralast DL7127M. Advertized as 63 amp. They won't do anything close to that while holding enough voltage to not discharge the battery. I imagine if you put an artificial load on them you could get to a measured 63 amps and as long as you never noticed that output voltage would probably be pulled down to 10.3 volts or something. You know, like the way the doofuses at AutoZone do it when you take one back to the store and they put it on their fancy machine they don't know how to use.

[blindsquirrel]

Nobody commented about why a 'Goodwrench 305' has weird crooked spark plugs, so I guess that part worked.

[RDF1]

Ive only worked on one SBC in the past 15 years so i know nothing about them haha..

[blindsquirrel]

Well back in the day, before the LS and the slowest car anybody shows up with is 650 wheel HP, the way you won street races was to look slower than you really were. Black painted aluminum heads & intake, column shifter, dirt, no big fancy gauges, no chrome or billet anything, skinny tires...

[GHuggins]

AND everything inside changed, ported and reworked How I got started

[blindsquirrel]

"C'mon guys, how fast could it really be? Go ahead, look at anything you want, I got nuthin' to hide..."

[GHuggins]

I heard story of some guys that would drill tiny holes in the intake manifolds then put wax in the holes for the running pre-inspections. Wax wouldn't melt till you hit the track and since it passed pre-inspection it didn't have to run for the post inspection. Set the carb up a touch rich and good to go Wouldn't think a little hole in each runner would change much, but guess they added up especially with restrictions to the carb sizes. Then the tear down inspections started and well everything out the window after that... Of course that was only 20some years ago... Not as far back as you're talking about

[blindsquirrel]

This wasn't anything organized, just backroads at 2 AM kind of stuff. Back before everybody got rich (everybody but me, apparently) and started showing up with 5th-wheel trailers and toterhomes and going to the tracks instead.

edit: Oh, and if you want to take all the fun out of a subculture, give it it's own TV series. I can't watch any of that shit.

[RDF1]

hahahah.. Im neighbors with one of those guys and they were cool before getting "Famous"

Years ago i had the rear mount turbo truck that looked like grandpa's truck with big toolbox and all.
It was really quiet but ran high 11s on a all terrain.
The guys with "stock" g-bodys would show up and talk trash. End up racing them and absolutly embarrass them and their nitrous 305 peg leg g body.
They couldnt figure it out even after raising the hood to show it just has a "cold air intake".

[blindsquirrel]

...what if it only looks like a 305 peg leg G-body, though?

And it must be low on trans fluid, that's why it revs like that just driving around. It's really slow. And that trans can't last much longer. Whadda ya say, give me one length and the break?

[TheMechanic]

Well back in the day, before the LS and the slowest car anybody shows up with is 650 wheel HP, the way you won street races was to look slower than you really were. Black painted aluminum heads & intake, column shifter, dirt, no big fancy gauges, no chrome or billet anything, skinny tires...

I did many under intake nitrous kits. Even put one in on a boxed frame rail as the tank. BCPP. (Before Cell Phone Pictures)

[blindsquirrel]

Well, I have the engine harness just about completely out of the car. Running one wire for new gauges kinda snowballed. I'm undecided on just doing an 8GA overlay with the original charge wire, or changing it all up to get rid of the dogknot on the starter B+ post with a new junction/distribution block on the firewall or something.

[JR92RS]

Well, I have the engine harness just about completely out of the car. Running one wire for new gauges kinda snowballed. I'm undecided on just doing an 8GA overlay with the original charge wire, or changing it all up to get rid of the dogknot on the starter B+ post with a new junction/distribution block on the firewall or something.

just curious have you ever gone back out to the truck after having used the headlights, let it cool off for an hour then test though out the fuse panel or any engine bay fuse blocks looking for a parasitic drain in the system...especially the eternal lighting circuit's? perhaps it's a relay failing in a very funky way causing it to reactivate after it cools....just spitballing

[blindsquirrel]

It was 100% fixed by putting on a real, non-AutoZone alternator. 140-amp CS144 from a 1996 Caprice.

edit: And the current harness disassembly is because original wiring was meant for a 63A alternator, and I've now more than doubled that, so the dinky little 10GA charge wire needs upgradin', not because it doesn't work, but because this alt is capable of melting it given the right (wrong?) conditions.

[clevor]

is this a one wire alternator?

[blindsquirrel]

No. Both alternators 'work', the parts store 10SI ones just could not put out more than 40 amps. The new one with the same wiring can put out more than 40 amps, and works fine.

[blindsquirrel]

So does anyone have a recommendation for a super-grippy series of v-belt, before I throw money at it and go to the 3rd gen F-body 5 rib pulleys? It only squeals like a stuck pig on a cold start if I've had the doors open a while and the battery wants lots of amps. The old system wasn't able to create enough load to slip the belt no matter how much demand there was.

[blindsquirrel]

Well, March Performance may make great parts but they have decided they do not need to bother with responding to emails, so no money for them.

[blindsquirrel]

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