84clonewars said:
Hi, I had a similar problem with my 3rd gen Camaro, after a sbc 355 and complete gauge swap I couldn't get the alternator to charge my battery. Come to find out when I did the gauges I didn't hook the two wire alt. up correctly, one wire should go directly to the battery and the other should go to the volt gauge to send the signal to the alt. for charging the battery. If you have after market gauges it should say signal on the back of the gauge atleast my autometer ultralite does. I hope this helps you man good luck getting your ride back on the streets.
the alternator has a voltage regulator in it. There's no need for a voltage gauge. What you did was hook up the regulator's sensor wire to your volt gauge so the gauge reads the output of the alternator, not a bad idea but not necessary in any case. Unless you hooked up the alt 'on' wire to your volt gauge, then that would've been an ign on from the gauge hotwires, probably what you did seeing as it 'worked' after you did this..
