i am adding a summit 1 wire alternator to my 71 and am confused about how to attach the wiring that is factory and runs on the front frame rail around the engine. this was originally plugged into the voltage regulator assembly. there are 4 wires total. 2 that hooked to the front prongs on the regulator, 1 wire (looks either yellow or brown) with an eyeloop that hooked to the side post on the reg. and 1 small wire that ran to the alt with a male/female plug. has anyone done this conversion or is there a tech page showong how to do this? any help or ideas?
Several people on here have done this. Your description of the regulator sounds like the starter solenoid. The voltage regulator is the square box right near that. You can get rid of the regulator (square box) and the harness that goes with it. The alternator gets grounded through the large bolt that goes into the head so make sure there is bare metal contact there. Then the single wire from the rear of the alternator connects to the battery cable at the starter solenoid (thing with 4 prongs). I used 8 AWG wire for my 80 amp alternator. A single wire alternator doesn't have provisions for operating the "ALT" light in the dash.
you will also need the plug that goes into the alt...any parts store should have it... that is to hook up the exciter wire (switched on hot)...frank...
That's for a 3-wire alternator. A 1-wire has, well, only one wire. The battery charging wire. It's excited internally at a specific rpm by it's own magnetism. Sometimes when you first start a car with a 1-wire you will see the voltmeter hanging around 12 volts, goose the throttle up to about 1500 rpm and the alternator turns on.
mine is a 1 wire. the plug has three (3) wires in it but i only hooked up one (1) to a switched on power...frank...
Hmm, I have two 1-wire alternators, neither have had a plug, just a single screw terminal on the rear for the battery charging wire. No place to even connect a plug.
i agree. my 1 wire has 1 wire that i put an eye on it. start it up and bring the rpm up to about 2k and it jumps right up.
