upgrading
 

hey all, im gonna buy a new alternator this week, and im looking to upgrade to a high out put alt. im between the 100 amp and the 145. im looking to runa whole sound system and electric fan and maybe sum hids. any suggestions? i heard that i would need to be careful if i ran a higher out put alt since it could fry s**t.

You have to be careful of your amp meter in your cluster and the wires. The more amps you have, the larger the wire has to be for it. If you have a volt meter, you'll be fine. If you have an amp meter, you'll want to make sure that it can handle the amps. If it only goes up to 80 amps, you'll need to get and aftermarket gauge or bypass it all together.

how do i know if i have a volt meter or an amp meter?

Voltmeter only reads up to 18 volts. An amp meter will read -60 to +60 or -80 to +80 or D to C

thanks super mod, u have opened my eyes to something i had no knowledge about. have you bypassed an amp meter or anyone here?

Hey Pan, theres a fix out there for amp meter. Lots of folks have bypassed them. I'll keep my eyes out for it. Might be on Allpar or mymopar.com

thanks dude! i got alot of reading to do. im also reading about the one wire alts to the 3 wire alts ahhhhhhhhh!

Might also want to read up on how to align your alternator without using a roll of nickles:D!

HAHAHAHAHAHA dude!!! i dunno why they (previous owner) would do somthing like that, but it looks to me like they used sum other bracket that didnt belong and hooked it up that way. i saw the holes in the block for the bolts where the alternator should be. i dunno why they just didnt buy the bracket, i got it for 14 bucks! the alt sits really bad, so bad that it cracked from the strain since there is no support!

the old mopars used a straight through amp gauge with a mechanical regulator (lousy setup). Newer mopes used an ampmeter with a "shunt" wire for protection in conjunction with an electronic voltrage regulator. {i have no idea what year they changed to the shunted ampmeter}. Even newer mopes used a voltmeter.

I like the idea of bypassing the old ampmeter and using a voltmeter with an elect. volt reg. I think all you have to do is run a large gauge wire in conjunction with the appropriate size fusible link from the output post of the alt. to the hot post on the starter relay. [maybe even the hot post on the starter itself].


side note: I noticed while driving my Freightliner today that the Amp gauge is rated at 100 amps in either direction.{D or C}

I have a single wire setup in my jeep for a 140 amp alternator. I can replace the amp meter that I have with a volt meter but I just check the voltage at the battery every once in a while with a multimeter and call it good.

Then again, my j10 is just a wheeling rig..... not a muscle car.

Yeah 78, I think the amp gauge in the 78 jeeps had the shunt wire. I think the one's you gotta watch out for are the early {pre '75}(not sure?) with no shunt wire that are rated at 50 amps.[?] If you combine one of those with a high powered alt. and add alot of accessories you are just askin' for trouble. All your loads must go through that gauge and it doesn't take much to add up to 50 amps. and 50 amps is pushing it. [high powered stereo, etc..] TRhen consider the age of the stuf.

My j10 is a 74 and the gauge read up to 60 amps. The how charging system went through the gauge so when I had issues with it, I just built my own cluster and everything worked out great, with the stock alternator. Now that I have a high output, I just by pasts the gauge and hooked up the positive single wire back to the battery.