Overcharging Coronet
 

I put a plymouth wiring harness in my 66 coronet and when i fired it up it ran fine then when i went down the road i noticed everytime i gave it gas the guage went to full charge everytime to the point where the white face guages i put in it started to bubble and turn black anyone have any ideas what may be causing this i did buy a new voltage regulator just haven't put it on yet but the old regulator was a VR101 P/S instead of the VR706 anyone know what the difference in the two may be.

Josh -

No idea what the difference is between the two VRs, but does sound like a voltage regulator/alternator mismatch. Longshot, but do you know that you have the right ballast resistors?

Archer

My thoughts exactly.

I had a similar situation and blew out both of my headlights. Voltage regulator.

Isnt there an instrument panel voltage regulator in those? They limit instrument voltage to about 5 volts. Could you have bypassed it? Or its possibly bad, but they are usually designed to fail "open". Read this too.. http://www.allpar.com/history/mopar/electrical2.html

Very interesting reading! Thanks, R

I'm about 99% sure this isn't correct, but if you disconnect the wire from the voltage regulator and attach it to some other wire (dont remeber off the top of my head) you'll have full charge. It'll peg over all the way. Not bad for a while, but it'll eventually melt the battery.

Guess it could be possible you have the voltage regulator bypassed somehow...

Well i replaced the voltage regulator that didn't work i put a tester on it and it's getting 12.95 volts when idle and when i step on gas it goes up to almost 15 is it possible the alternator is overcharging cause the voltage regulator gets real hot i mean hot

if the regulator is getting hot, then you more than likely have a ground. As for the instument voltage regulator, it does limit most current, but not to the ammeter, it's a straight shot. You need to know what is going on in your charging system even if your insrument voltage regulator fails. If you can not find a ground, your voltage regulator might be set wrong. You are able to open it by removing 2 screws, and there is a contact on the top that you can open a SLIGHT amount to adjust current flow. There is no way to test the amount of voltage permitted to pass though it with out an operational test that i know of. Good luck