Yeah, on my truck, I got in one day, and the turn signals, and windshield wipers refused to work.... That was a surprise.... Dug thru the wiring diagrams, and Oh, hey! Lookitthat! They both share a common ground..... Looking at it, everything looked good, if a tad crusty.... tried to wiggle the wires, and nothing was loose, but, strangely enough, wipers and signals started working again....... There are five or six wires that ground there... so, pulled 'em all off, cleaned things up, and nary a problem since.....

 

That's crazy. But good investigative work to track it down! Things that drive a man nuts! Over the past 18 months I would occasionally go around my truck looking for ground points to clean up. Who knows if it headed off troubles but it doesn't take a lot of work. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of....

I wish I hadn't wasted all that time pulling the starter and cleaning up contacts. That's rough work for this old body. On the other hand, now that it's done, I feel good I was able to clean up that starter. That valve cover leak had that starter completely coated with sludge. Amazing it still worked.

 

I think the starter needed the cleanup anyway... those were nasty.

 

Agree. Didn't know how nasty they were until I was able to get a snapshot of it. They were actually as nasty as they looked when I took them apart.

Gotta say I'm impressed with those OEM starters. They're beefy. I think that's a popular starter across several car manufacturers. Wonder who makes them.

 

TEST 9 & 10: PASS

10 consecutive starts with at least 24 hours between starts. I hereby declare this problem solved!

On to the next problem…

 

So my voltage fluctuation is back again. I give up. Gauge needle dances around at idle and steadies up as soon as I give her some gas. Out of ideas. How many times can a person check grounds?

 

Maybe it's a 'feature', and not a 'bug'?? Kinda like Windows 95?

 

I'm beginning to think so. Either way, it's at a point where it is what it is. The battery is getting charged and until it doesn't there isn't much use in worrying about it. 30 year old trucks are, well, 30 year old trucks.

 

Well HY, the saga with my dancing voltage dash gauge continues. I tried cinching down the three mounting screws on the regulator AGAIN. One of which contains the ground ring terminal that goes to the alternator ground point. Two of the three screws would not tighten anymore one iota. The third one (the one containing the ground terminal) tightened only infinitesimally…maybe one degree. Yet it seemed to help. My dash gauge quit dancing next time I took it out but only for about 10 miles then it came back tho less severe. Thinking the regulator ground has to be the problem (despite running a 10 gauge ground wire to the alternator ground point AND sanding the paint down to metal behind the regulator), I decided to add another 10 ga. ground wire going from a reg mount screw to a different ground point (a screw on the fender with two other ground wires). So now it has two ground wires going to two different grounding points plus a bare metal fender where the reg is secured. My dash gauge has been steady eddy the last four times I have taken my truck out.

I’m beyond trying to understand any of this other than there is no such thing as too much grounding of an external voltage regulator. My only next step is to sink a 20 foot copper rod into my lawn and tether my truck to it with a cable I steal off an overhead power line.

 

Where does the gauge ground at???