Personal Dumbassery; Confirming Upgraded Alternator and Arne's Adaptor Connections!

[a7dz]

Enrique;

Stephen's car should not have an accessory relay. It is a real eary 70.

[KDMatt]

duffman:

I'll clear the air and say this first. Seeing as I have a '76, I do not have an ammeter, nor do I really know the proper behavior of an ammeter, but I'm taking a stab here anyway.

My electrical system behaved similarly to yours (i.e. dimming/brightening lights at random) for a while in the past. I rectified this problem by replacing the voltage regulator.

I realize that your alternator is from an 81 ZX, and is, thus, internally regulated, but let me ask: Is it brand new, or is it used? ... If it's used I would suspect that the internal regulator inside of the alternator could need some attention. This, to me, would explain sudden jumps in amperage coinciding with brightening/dimming headlights.

[Duffman]

KDMatt, I had the diodes checked on the internal regulator when I had the alternator benchtested, seemed to be fine.

[Ramses]

Duffman,

I had something similar happen to my 73. After tracing the wiring through the entire car and merging 6 wiring harnesses to make 3. I found out that my problem was the lack of connection from my dash wiring harness to the steering column switch. My combo-switch had 3 loose solder points and was real easy to fix. It just took about 3 weeks of replacing alot of electrical parts before I came to that conclusion.

Good luck

[Duffman]

Thanks, Ramses!