As I put together is 65 Barracuda, I notice more and more, wrong.

When I powered the harness through the battery, I heard the regulator buzzing. I removed it, took it apart, and noticed the spring was off and one leg was burnt off. White burn marks were also present on the inside of the black lid.

Acc. to the drawings, the field wire (dark green) and the ignition (dark blue) were on the wrong terminals. that's the way I got the car and it ran.

I guess; can the regulator work with the wire crossed? I'm just curious if the wires got re-crossed somewhere else in the harness.

Looking at the schematics, offhand it looks like the car would run and charge if the blue & green were reversed unless the points inside the regulator ground as shown in my schematic - then it would short out the ignition. I suspect that the schematic isn't quite right, as there's not much point in doing that.

I forgot to add that a load resistor would be on the wrong side and cause the points to arc more, but it would still pretty much work.

A point style regulator won't work backwards..........

My regulator blew out one of the fusible links after spiking to 20+ volts when I had an alternator in a drill press to test it and had the regulator wired backwards.

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

I haven't tested one, just looked at the schematics I have (which could well be inaccurate), but they show 5 resistors (w/o values) total, with 1 resistor across the points, which if wired wrong would tend to make the voltage at the solenoid winding appear low, which would tend to make the regulator call for more charge and cause the alternator output to run high. Also, a load resistor that ought to be on the field winding side wouldn't be there, so there wouldn't be a load to help dissipate energy stored in the field winding's magnetic field, increasing arcing at the points.

If there is no (or a large value) resistor across the points, the regulator ought start off with the points closed (call for charge) and probably be rather unstable, as the winding that pulls the points open would be pulsed entirely on and off (rather than just changing current slightly) and that would also hard on points.

Again, my schematics show that the field is grounded through a resistor when the regulator calls for charge, and if that is to also help dissipate energy it could be a rather low value - and if hooked up backward would send a rather large current through the points to ground that could burn the points. eventually.

I've seen alternators with 2 of 3 field windings fried still sort-of work and other things smoking still work, so w/o all the details, it's hard to say what exactly would happen when the regulator is hooked up backward. I could easily imaging that while the regulator was calling for ~20V, all you got was 13V.