ok ive had my 82 t/a up and running for a few months now with some ups and downs but the biggest problem im having now is it will not hold a charge and the battery is only a month or two old!! it started doing this right before i swaped my long tube headers on so while i was under the car i took all the conections apart cleaned them and reinstaled except for my positive cable from batt. to starter one of the ends broke off when removing so i stole the one from my 86. anyway well everytime i go to start it i have to jump it and if i let it idle for long periods of time it will start to chug and load up and cut off it did this the other day after running for about 15mins and the gauge was reading like 10-11volts i turned the key and no buzzer and not even a click from the starter. ive checked all my grounds everything seems to be good only thing i can think off is the alternator but im completely lost when it comes to much of anything electrical related. i have a new one wire alternator that i had gotten from summit for my 86 but never instaled i may try it but i have to swap pullies. anyone have any sugestions? its like the car isnt getting enough juice and its not burning all the fuel ect ect i thought it was my carb just running really rich but now i finaly see its electrical. i can shut it off and if i wait 30sec or more before i try and restart it will not crank.

 

Definitely the alternator, either it's bad or not hooked up correctly.

 

im thinking its bad the alternator came out of my 86 t/a along with the accesories and i bought the 86 in march of 04 and alternator was like 6months old at the time but since then it was pulled out of the 86 2 or three times with motor and now in my 82 lol. guess ill be working on trying to swap it out tomarrow

 

I would also say your alternator is fried. your gage should read 13-14. My 01' gmc started doing exactly what yours was doing and once I threw a new alt in everything went back to normal.

 

ok cool. jw i may sound stupid for this but my alt i got from summit doesnt really have very good instructions and like i said im electrical ignorant. i can pull motors/trannys and take em apart and put em back together all day long but when it comes to wires im lost and i get very frustrated and irritated easaly




p.s. single wire alt just hook to batt.?

 

A one wire alternator or "self exciting" as sometimes called has one wire running to it, that one wire is the main large battery wire.this type of Alt only needs a battery wire hooked to it. it doesn't need an ignition wire to activate it.The voltage regulator contains circiutry that uses the residual magnetism in the Alt's fields to determine when to turn on. The regulator does this by sensing the RPMs the Alt is turning. this type of Alt is commonly used on custom cars,trucks &tractors and other non standard aplications.

 

thanks ill post my results