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.

Ignition... What's your point?

After the last road test, we're looking for ways to get the engine running a little better. We ordered up an electronic ignition module that is a drop-in replacement for the existing points. It's a Pertronix Ignitor II module. This is the module that includes an embedded microcontroller to adjust the dwell time based upon engine needs.








First we opened up the distributor, and removed the old points and condenser. These were new, and had been gaped properly months ago when we were working on our "first start" of the engine.

Next we installed the new ignitor in the distributor, and made sure that the vacuum advance had clearance around the wires.











The included nuts with the kit did not fit our ignition coil, so we had to find one in the spare parts jar.
Once we got that sorted out we cut the old wires, crimped on the new connectors and finished the wiring job.

We fired up the engine again, and adjusted the timing to account for the new module. It's running smoother now, but still something is not 100%.











Grampy was here with us, and when we got the Mustang up and running again, we put in the rear seat-belts and took it out for a spin with Grampy along for the ride.

We also did some tests on the electrical system since we had to jump the car after we brought it to the gas station last time. When I placed it on the battery charger, it took 10Amps for quite a while, indicating that the battery was quite low.

When the engine is running, the battery is discharging. When the engine is off, the battery recaptures some of its charge. We looked at the off-board regulator module, and used contact cleaner on the wiring connections. This is a crazy electro-mechanical module, thankfully there are now solid-state replacements. We'll order up one of those, and a new wiring connector.