Haulin_in_Dixie

Ok bear with me for a minute.... Two of you said that there were three terminals on the regulator that you used only two. There were two different regulators, one had three terminals, the later one had only two. You should be using the two terminal regulator. In the faq's is the diagram on how it should be hooked up.

I am not trying to browbeat you and you may very well be way ahead of me, but when these things happen, there is generally a simple and dumb cause. The fords had an extra connection the stator and the regulator had generally four connections. You should have all new wiring. You said that you used a relay that fed full battery power to the regulator so that should be fine. I believe that you said that you did add a ground between the regulator and the alternator, that is necessary for smoothe operation, at least it was on mine.

If you have the three terminal regulator, you might try the two terminal regulator and accompnied wiring.

59FORD

Haulin

You are right, I am using the late regulator and the ND 120amp alt.

I am using the stock Dodge alt cable across to the Ford solinoid on the
right fender. Then around the firewall, down to the starter with welding
cable, from the starter up to the battery (on the left side).

Yes, I have a direct ground from the alt to the regulator.


Battery to starter is 2/0 welding cable

Alt to battery is #4 welding cable


I will edit this later with the exact wire sizes, it's too early and it's dark outside.

59FORD

^

Haulin_in_Dixie

Sounds like you have it all done right. I can't possibly thing of anything except the possibility of a low current poor connection. We used to have that problem on the Detroit diesels, where the starter terminal would give problems of contact. The only possible thing I could even try is to run a cable direct to the battery from the alternator, of course disconnecting from the starter and solonoid. And that probably won't help any, but its a try. You may have already done that.

Sorry, I'm out of thoughts on it. Now this sounds like a dumb statement, but... It is not supposed to work that way, and there is something wrong. Been there many times. When you find it you will say "jeez, why did I not think of that before"

Haulin_in_Dixie

See in the "all new wiring" thing in the above posts, I had in mind the Ford method of using fusable links which can cause all sorts of problems. Dodge instead decided to use a heavy fuse on the alternator main feed. Used to have a bunch of Fords and the fusable links are a hateful thing on an older vehicle.

Jim Lane

Like I had said before, I have a 4 ga. welding cable runing direct from the alternator to the battery positive terminal with a 200 amp T fuse. I had flickering lights when I was using a Transpo adjustable voltage regulator.
If you follow the wiring you will probably find from the solenoid all of the current will be fed to the battery through a 10 gauge fuse link.
Check the system for a voltage drop, both on the negative and positive.
Use your digital voltmeter and put 1 probe on the alternator "Bat" terminal and the other probe on the "positive" terminal on the battery with the engine running and all loads on. If you have a 4 ga. wire connection, you should have less than 1.0 volt showing on the meter between the 2 points. If the voltage is above 1.0 volt or volts going up and down in sync with your lights, then there is too much resistance.
Remove the wire from the solenoid and connect it to the battery with a good fuse about 160 amp. That should fix the problem, it is worth a try.
Also installing a 555 alternator is easy and will power more loads than you could give it and the unit will last forever.
Good Luck
Jim.