SPF Electricals -

[greg schroeder]

Originally Posted by flipscobra

I have 1, my amp metter keeps jumping unless you cut the lights on an the fan. the parking lights pulse when they are on. Its charging but annoying watching the hand jump all the time.

I'm not an any sort of expert, but here's what I figured out.

For my car the wire for the amp meter ran a very long length from the one wire alternator then across the front of the car, then down the left fender and then to the fuse area, then to the amp meter, then out the other terminal on the amp meter and then to the battery in a round about way. The length of wire and gauge size was insufficient for higher amp draws, so things tick a bit on the gauge when accessories are used. The amp draw isn't really huge as there are minimal accessories, so it didn't seem to cause any function problem other than a gauge tick when things turn on and off for an instant.

In addition for my car one of the spade connector wires on the amp gauge was loose, resting in location to touch and jiggle on vibrations and bums. The gauge is in series, so it makes an intermittent loss of connection causing a jiggle in the reading. In my example the car was a one wire alternator, so for the time the wire is not touching the alternator tried to send massive voltage to charge. It melted the internal regulator in the alternator. I put on a new alternator and plugged the amp wire on tight. It was good to go and just fine.

Another condition is if the one wire to the alternator is loose or falls off the alternator. That also causes the amp meter to do strange things. Fix that quick or you'll be in trouble.