Alternator, or something else?

[Grand_87_national]

Hello, all. I'm experiencing a charging issue and I'm hoping it's simply coincidental, that I've made changes to the electrical system. I had an issue with my dual fans killing my battery (fan delay relay removed), so I pulled the 2 relays on my caspers harness to test them. One has 3 blue wires and a black while the other has 3 reds and a black. The latter killed the fans, so I simply swapped the relays and the fans started spinning. This told me it was not likely to be an issue with the relay, but I tested it anyway. Relay was fine. I did some research and descovered that the new harness still uses the factory hi/low relays, but they simply trigger the new relays and do not carry the load of the fans. One was bad, so I replaced both of them with some off-the-shelf units from autozone. I wasn't concerned with a high quality unit, simply because they only trigger the caspers relays, and do not carry any heavy load. First drive this morning and the fan issue is resolved, however, my voltage was low (10.5 to 11.5 while driving). I have a kill switch on the rear bumper so I pushed it in, and the car immediately died. Driving home from work today, there was not enough voltage to turn my wideband on until I was half way home (kicks on at 12v), and this was vary brief, as it quickly dropped back to sub-12 volts, and bounced around again. The thing that makes me hopeful that this is a coincidence, is that about a month ago, I started the car, and noticed my wideband wasn't reading. Never even thought to look at voltage, I simply shut the car off, restarted it, and the wideband started it's countdown as normal. Normally, all indications would lead me to swap out the alternator and never look back. I'm nervous about that, simply because I have made changes to the system, even though I don't feel like they should affect charging. Battery is a newer yellow top (about 3 months old). Am I missing something, or is it simply a voltage regulator issue, and time for an alternator swap? Thanks for any help, fellas.

 

[RmvBfrFlght]

This is a common problem with the stock alternator wiring. At key-on, engine-off make sure that the dash VOLTS lights up. If it doesn't the alternator won't produce charge voltage. And there are lots of issues with this.

Can get Casper's field fix kit for a plug & play solution. This energizes the alternator bypassing the failure prone dash bulb.

Or, get an alternator connector that has the F wire in it and connect it to the PNK/BLK wire at the EGR solenoid.

RemoveBeforeFlight

 

[Grand_87_national]

This is a common problem with the stock alternator wiring. At key-on, engine-off make sure that the dash VOLTS lights up. If it doesn't the alternator won't produce charge voltage. And there are lots of issues with this.

Can get Casper's field fix kit for a plug & play solution. This energizes the alternator bypassing the failure prone dash bulb.

Or, get an alternator connector that has the F wire in it and connect it to the PNK/BLK wire at the EGR solenoid.

RemoveBeforeFlight

Thanks for the reply. The "volts" indicator was, in fact, on yesterday. Never did charge as it should, but it is generating power, judging by the roller coaster that is my volt gauge / scanmaster volt readings. It sounds to me like a bad voltage regulator, but I'm sure there are other issues it could be.