alternator issues, looking to upgrade possibly.

[rbates]

Interesting as I have heard the opposite..would be nice to get some sort of consensus from those that have done the conversion. Intuition was telling me that a ~ 40yr old mech device will have less precision than a newer ss device.

[Zed Head]

I have an MDS6AL ignition & I don't believe the exteranl VC plays that well with it.

You didn't say anything about precision. I'm not sure what that means here, since it just needs to be wiithin a certain fairly wide range of charging voltage. Seemed like you were implying that you might have problems, and really, the only problem you have with a VR is when it fails. I was referring to VR failures.

The solid state VR might last longer under normal conditions, but the mechanical would handle the abnormal conditions better, I think.

[2sixTZombii]

Alternator tested good, so I'm suspecting the VR a little more, its the original Datsun unit that came with the car. I've got it pulled everything looks a little dirty on the bottom but being are soldered connections I don't think it matters as nothing is broken. Inside its pretty clean with a couple dirty areas but all is pretty shiny and nothing looks burnt. What would tip me off to a bad VR? The W/Blk and the W/blu are are soldered as mentioned in the above post, but the black was hanging loose off the VR, and has solder on as if it was soldered to something but broke loose, might be my issue right there. Gonna investigate and see what it was hooked too, anyone know what the the plain black was leading to originally?

[Zed Head]

Looks like Black is ground (Earth). Hard to tell what it's grounding though from the drawings. Sometimes Nissan runs a dedicated ground wire to the cover. Check the cover for solder.

Didn't realize also that you were dealing with past problems and broken wires, your first post made it sound like this was a fresh problem. That kind of changes the situation. The internally regulated alternator might be the way to go, although it could take some problem solving to fix other things that might be affected by the external VR. You'll go from 50 amps to 60 with the ZX alt which might be worth doing anyway. But I think that might be possible just by getting a 1976 externally regulated alternator. Many paths possible.

Edited December 5, 2013 by Zed Head