No Charge

So, while we drove the car around a bit to the gas station, I had to get a jump start to get it to start again. A quick test of the battery with the car running showed that it was draining the battery rather than charging it. When we replaced to alternator, we did not replace the "Voltage Regulator" that is connected to it.

This suspicious looking dusty black box held the Voltage Regulator. I had been wondering what this thing was, and when it would become a problem we had to solve.

We replaced the voltage regulator, which was an old style wire wound regulator. We went with a modern Solid State regulator for improved performance. Here's what we found inside the old one:

Wire wound resistors and "Buzzer Coils" that kind of act like a relay and make/break the circuit very quickly creating a PWM that reduces the voltage. That's how it got done in 1966, and for quite a while after that.

Here's the new regulator in place, with a new connector soldered into the old wiring harness. We ran the car a bit, and the voltmeter showed that it was charging the battery now.