Well, this post isn't really about my Camaro, but my truck. The alternator seems to be the same however.

I am just rewiring everything right now in my truck and I am trying to run the motor with everything else disconnected. The ignition was a piece of cake, but I am trying to get the battery charging circuit isolated so I have attepted to wire it directly to the battery for the time being.

So this should be simple, but I still get no 13 to 14 vdc while running. 3 leads coming out of the alternator, 2 in a plug (tan and red) and a (+ BAT) lug on the alternator. The tan is ground obviously and I verified continuity to ground. With tan hooked to the negative post of the battery, and red to positive, with the (+BAT) jumpered to positive post of battery, still no charge.

Could somebody please explain what the 3 wires do? Why not just have 2 wires coming out of this thing with regulated, rectified current? My trusty Haynes shop manual and scematics were a bit less then conclusive!

Oh BTW, this alternator is not very old. Only about 3 years old and I have put less then 5000 miles on it. But it was an advance auto parts "quality" replacement..

 

That tan one is not a ground, the alternator housing itself is the ground being that it is attached to the motor. That tan one sounds like its the sensing wire that tells the Alt to come on and should be hooked up to a No charge light that comes from the dash and is turned on when key is in run position.

 

You were right. Indeed the tan wire is one that ends up in the dash cluster showing a no charge situation if it occurs.

I ended up getting everything to work just fine today, and figured my problem out.

Thanks for the input.

 

Glad I could help, this board has helped me out a lot too!!! Im glad its here.