[Guest]

Columbo's '66 289/2V is supposed to have a 55 A alternator, but I'm not 100% sure. Some of you may know he's having a charging problem when he uses his car-stereo (radio CD-player, subwoofer and seperate power amp). Today we finally took his Mustang to the paint shop, so we have the stereo lying around to be bench-tested soon.

Today I was checking the currents to and fro the battery and from the alternator on my 1970 Volvo Amazon. It has a 35 A Bosh alternator. I was somewhat surprised to find that the wire to the BAT-terminal of the alternator is much thicker than the one on the Mustang.

I'm considering the possibility that the wire on the Mustang is too thin to take 55 A without considerable losses (maybe it was replaced at one point in time with thinner wire?).

I would like to know the original wire gauge to the alternator terminals to confirm if my suspicions are right.

 

[BillScott]

my "68 has what i would guess to be an AWG 10 wire - my wire tables are not available so i can not tell you if this is adequate or not. you can check adequacy of alternator by measuring 13.5 +/- 1.0 volts across battery terminals with the added stereo off and then on. if alt can't handle stereo voltage will dip below specified voltage which would indicate overload or wiring for stereo could be causing problem.

 

[Gerahead]

Compare the size of the conductor, not the wire. The thickness of the insulation can vary a lot for the same sized conductor.

Jim Gates
72 Mach 1 - 460, C6
65 Olds 4-4-2, 400 ci, 4-sp
71 Dart Swinger 340 - Project in the queue