just finished up mt plenum repair which included several items, timing chain, harmonic balancer, cap/rotor, idle and throttle sensors, and water pump.

The bad news, the alternator isn't charging the battery. Read 11 volts at the battery while running. It tested bad at Advance, so I replaced it and it's still not charging. Battery was good before 1st restart. Grounding looks good, 120amp fuse looks good.

I did find a check valve right in front of the distributer not connected to anything, and cannot find where it connects.

It's very possible I missed a connection in there. Maybe completely screwed up some wiring somewhere??? Any thoughts?

 

Check the grounds over by the power steering pump. You prolly left one off.

 

no luck, all appear to be tight...

 

Ok, If I remember correctly..... there are four or five 'wires' that connect to the alternator, all of which need to be there, clean, and tight. Then, there is the ground connection that goes to the bracket right off the main connector for the field control connections, check that one as well. Clean everything up nice, and see if that doesn't improve it's attitude.

 

No dice, cleaned the connections and made sure they are tight.

Cleaned the battery terminals and clamps to make sure all was good.

Charged the battery, had over 12 volts before starting. The engine runs and sounds great, just not long because no input from the alternator.

No way my PCM crapped out right? Any way to check if the voltage regulator terminals are good in the PCM?

 

Check the two small terminals on the funky connector with key on, engine running. (careful please, don't get anything sucked into the serp belt, that hurts......) Should have 12 volts on both, I think...... (from the terminal, to a ground.)

You could always install an external regulator.... as the current one is part of the PCM. (brilliant idea by the way....... NOT!)

 

Engine running/not running whats the volts on the large wire? Rev the engine whats the voltage? Whats the volts to the pcm pin 3? Pcm needs correct voltage at that pin to calculate the field needed. Pcm pin 20 is the field wire. Can use a tach or a dwell meter something to detect the pulses from this pin. Or simple remove said wire field wire from the pcm. This tells you on which side the fault is. Pcm or alternator/wireing.

 

ok, just finished this before reading the last 2 posts from you guys....

...I called BS on Advance Auto parts on the alternator being bad as the new one gave no help. Got my original core back from advance auto parts about 1 hour ago and took it to Autozone for testing.

(I watched the guy from advance, and left with little confidence with his work.)

It passed the test. Surprise, surprise! Switched out the new for original alt. Started it just for grins, same result.

Ok, voltage tests coming right now...give me a few min.

 

Did you connect the ground wire to the BACK of the alternator? Because i left that off, and it would not charge. Also, you may not have tightened it down.

I think that you didn't hook up the alternator correctly after the plenum repair. There is nothing about a plenum repair that would not make it charge unless you did not hook up the alt correctly.

 

i got 11.48 (right teminal ,I'm facing towards engine) and 0.81 (left terminal facing towrds engine) Volts.