Well this morning I went ahead and pulled the alternator and took it back to the repair shop. When I got there the guy that worked on the alternator hooked it up to the test machine and (sort of smugly)said..."The alternator is working perfectly".
Now I admit that I don't know a lot about alternators but I have learned quite a bit from the fine folks here, so I began to tell him the tests I had done to trace the problem down to the alternator.
Well since this guy was already convinced that his rebuild was fine, I could tell he was only half listening to me. He would cut me off in mid sentence to tell me that the problem has to be on my exciter wire circuit and even when I tried to tell him that the light bulb trick took that circuit completely out of the equation....he still would not hear of it.
Well just as I was about to give up the owner of the shop came in and this guy asked him what could cause my problem. Well even the owner thought that the exciter circuit (probably on the other side of the bulb) was the culprit. He asked me lots of questions about checking for voltage and I told him all of the tests I had performed (made me feel pretty darn good to be able to answer all of this questions) and after listening he said "Well there is an easy test to see if it's the alternator". Now the next thing I heard was music to my ears... He asked the guy that had worked on the alternator (Charlie) where his little 12v test light bulb was at. Right then I knew we were going to get somewhere because I saw the exact same test, that Art told me about, coming up.
Well when he walked up to the alternator I asked him if he was going to put the bulb between B+ and D+. He said he was because that would then eliminate any other wiring problem. Now when he said this Charlie just sort of looked away because he realized that this was one of the tests I had told him about that he had ignored. Well sure enough when the alternator was fired the little test bulb began to glow and right away the owner said "We have a fault in the alternator". Well not one to give up quickly, Charlie began to argue with him. Despite his arguments he owner told him that unless there was equal voltage on both terminals I would get glowing dash light bulbs. He said that the problem was that the alternator is giving charge voltage at the B+ terminal but only battery voltage at the D+ terminal and as long as this descrepancy existed my lights would not go completely out. Well they think they've tracked it down to a bad rectifier (even though they did put a new one in) and will be trying that tomorrow. They didn't have one in stock so no alternator today. Anyway, they have assured me that they will find the problem and that it will be right when I get it back so at least I know that the problem was in the alternator afterall. Whew!
Now once again, without this board I would have been paying someone else to figure this out. Also without this board I would not have stood and argued with Charlie concerning the alternator this morning. I would simply have taken him at his word that all was well with the alternator and would have had the exact same problem forever. I'm starting to think that as long as you guys don't get sick of hearing from me I might become somewhat of a backyard mechanic yet. Now if I can only get to the point where I figure out things on my own instead of having you all lead me step by step. :-)
Thanks a million to everyone who has helped me with this. I can't even begin to imagine how much money you've saved me already by doing the troubleshooting for me.
Hope everyone has a great week.
Dave
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I dream of a world where a chicken can cross the road without having its motives questioned.