alternator upgrade question

[mullinax95]

I have recently installed the 70 version charging system with the constant output alternator on my 67 Barracuda. I did the ammeter bypass upgrade also that I found using this site by madelectrical.com and everything has been soldered and heat shrinked.
The question I have is I had Accel 300+ ignition system installed on the car already and I did away with the ballast resister and put all of the wires together and everything is fine. The instructions for the performance ignition showed doing away with the the ballast altogether. Now that I installed the 70 version alternator and voltage regulator just like the diagram shows but less the ballast resistor I had to return the alternator to the store. They checked it and said it went bad. The problem that happened was for some reason the blue wire coming form the voltage regulator got so hot that it melted near the alternator. It blew the fuse on my ignition box and the car shut down and when I popped the hood I saw smoke come off of the wire. Now I have installed a new alternator rechecked my wiring with a ohm meter and everything is back to normal. I checked the voltage at the battery and it is showing 14.54 volts. The car ran fine for a while before this happend. I have however installed a 20 amp fuse on the 12 v swithed wire going to the voltage regulator just in case.
Do I need to install a ballast resistor or did I just get a alternator that went bad? Ignition 1(blue) and Ignition 2(brown) are wired together now without the ballast resistor and really that is all the difference. The car will not run with these two wires not wired together. It seems that Ignition 2 (brown) shouldn't have anything to do with it but it might. Thanks for the help.

 

[BJS racing]

Do I need to install a ballast resistor or did I just get a alternator that went bad? Ignition 1(blue) and Ignition 2(brown) are wired together now without the ballast resistor and really that is all the difference. The car will not run with these two wires not wired together. It seems that Ignition 2 (brown) shouldn't have anything to do with it but it might. Thanks for the help.

No you do not need a ballast for the charging system. It was only for the ignition system. You can completely do away with the brown ign.2 wire. The ign. 2 brown wire was your bypass during start for the coil. It only has power in the crank position. I would look more at replacing the blue wire possibly with a 12 ga. wire. I would also look at stepping up the charge wire off the bat terminal. Here is a link to how Painless wires up a high out put alt. This may help you and keep this from happening again. Go to page 7 figure 7-1B.

http://www.painlessperformance.com/Manuals/90542Manual.pdf

 

[mullinax95]

No you do not need a ballast for the charging system. It was only for the ignition system. You can completely do away with the brown ign.2 wire. The ign. 2 brown wire was your bypass during start for the coil. It only has power in the crank position. I would look more at replacing the blue wire possibly with a 12 ga. wire. I would also look at stepping up the charge wire off the bat terminal. Here is a link to how Painless wires up a high out put alt. This may help you and keep this from happening again. Go to page 7 figure 7-1B.

http://www.painlessperformance.com/Manuals/90542Manual.pdf

For some reason if I don't have the brown wire hooked up the car will not start. I have tried cranking the car with the brown wire unhooked. It did crank one time and run but I have found that while turning the key in the start position I have to let it go quickly so it will turn back in the run position and it will fire up. I hope you understand what I'm talking about. It is the strangest thing. But when I hook the brown wire up with the blue the key works fine just like any normal vechile. I'm trying to figure out what fried my first alternator if I had something wired up wrong. But it could have been something just went wrong with the alternator.
I had already installed 4 ga wire running from the alternator to the starter relay to the starter and then to the trunk of the car where the battery is located.

 

[BJS racing]

If you take the Ign. 2 terminal and tie it in to the Ign. 1 lead that will give you power in both the start and crank position. Ign. 1 loses power when cranking so that is why when you have the brown under the hood it will work and when you disconnect it it won't. So either tie them together under the dash or under the hood. Under the hood it would be the blue and brown and the same under the dash.

 

[mullinax95]

Thanks for helping me with this. I already have the blue and the brown soldered together and taped up like I did before the alternator went out. I wish I new exactly what went wrong the first time so it won't happen again. But I have everything wired like I did before except this time I have a 20 amp buzz fuse wired in under the dash on the blue wire. I am going to drive the car today and hope everything goes well. I haven't drove it but cranked it up to see if the alternator was charging. I wanted to ask this question before I fried another alternator (not sure if it was my wiring or the alternator went bad) because I don't want to have to take another alternator back to the parts house.