The blue wire coming off the duck foot on the driver side inner fender well burned through (fusible blue wire), and I decided at this point to cut out duck foot and add a terminal block with fuses. All went well (soldered connections) but am still blowing a 40 amp fuse in this circuit and it appears that the same problem prevails where I am not getting charging volts to battery. Initially, what triggered all of this was on a very hot day last week, I went to the pharmacy and truck started fine with full cranking power - came out ten minutes later and click click . . . . waited a moment or two, readjusted battery terminals and then truck cranked but something still seemed wrong. I have been using ac alot lately (r12 makes ice cubes!) and am wondering if using the fan blower has put too much of a load on the wiring circuit of the old girl. Anyone familar with the duckfoot mentioned above and what it feeds? Is the wire running from the alternator to batt a fusible setup or was there a fusible wire on volt regulator on these trucks? Truck is currently at a shop where they will correct some battery cable stuff that was created by the previous old rancher owner. I looked at bulkhead and do not see any burnt connections on the pass through. Best just to bypass ammeter ?(I believe 83 is still ammeter) Thanks!

 

I have an 85 that had the worst hacked wiring harness I have ever seen. I started with a new harness I got from the junkyard which I then went thru and fixed any damage from age. I then cut out that duckfoot as you call it and replaced any circuit with a fusible link originally, running those thru an underhood fuse box also sourced from the junkyard.
the fuse box I used was from a 90-92 ranger. I judged what fuse to use for each circuit by wire gauge size on my truck and matches them to same wire gauge size in the replacement fuse box, and what amp fuse was in the holder that that particular gauge size wire came out from a particular fuse. I was able to match it up pretty well. I like the maxi fuses too.
I also added an additional, redundant 10 gauge hot wire from the alternator to another fuse holder in the box, there is a very chincey connection at back of Engine where the original alternator wire goes thru on way to that duckfoot. This will take some of the load off that chincey blade terminal. Do you have a wiring diagram for your truck? I had mine open and next to me the whole time, and I Drew up a couple of extras, showing my deviation from original, along with a map of the fuse box, showing what was originally wired to a given slot with my fuse usage right next to it and put a copy in the glove box. I hate fusible links.

 

Thanks Volaredon! Your repair sounds very complete. I took it to a shop after my work along with some threads from this site and other to assist the shop - they ran an extra 10 gauge wire from Alt to battery, and mentioned some other hacked wiring issues (not my work fortunately) they had discovered, repaired those and cleaned up positive battery side - supposedly all good for now, we shall see how this summer goes with ac blowing etc. Thanks!