> By disconnecting the thin brown wire at the alternator, or the
> thick/thin pair at the starter solenoid (which share a ring connector),
> the current leak goes away. This tells me there's a high resistance
> short to ground inside the alternator.
>
> My questions to The Oracle are, what's the thin hot wire to the
> alternator for? What should I do about this alternator? Of course in
> the meantime, I'll pull the known good unit off the parts car, but if
> the original alt is rebuildable I'd like to know what fault to look for.
Douglas, I won't swear to it without checking some manuals at home, but I
think that's the 'sense' line to the internal regulator. The concept is
that using a separate input for the regulator compensates for any voltage
drop in the output wire due to heavy charging current. 9ma is pretty small,
that may actually be normal for that alternator. (Just for comparison, the
'computer' in my 89 Dodge draws 12-15ma all the time, to keep it's RAM
alive.)
The fault, if any, is likely to be dirt buildup inside the alternator. Or
possibly a regulator failure (but I don't think it's likely).
Randall
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