Gary Lewis

2.5 second that is interesting, I could never find a time for my GR-818 outside of an Amazon listing that cites this regulator is a 10 second load response control which I take to mean 10 second LRC, and it states it is similar to the 36-6004 except 36-6004 w/o LRC and the 36-6008 w/ LRC 2.5 Second. I really need to devise a way to test and verify that this is a 10 second response cause I am curious if it just delays for 10 seconds if it really is 10 seconds or if it does like I think it does which is slowly ramp the output up over 10 seconds which would be great for me with my single V belt. I'd be curious to see what you come up with on the duct work. I dont know if I will need to do that, I seem to recall my 1G alternator sits out to the side of the opening of my fan shroud so it shouldnt get any air from the radiator blowing directly on it. Its also interesting that you have a lot of heat coming off your radiator with a 180* thermostat, I wonder if its because I have a smaller 302 with the HD cooling that keeps the coolant more or less close to or at the set point. I am curious though to see how much more air flow I have with my upgrade from the OE 5 blade flex fan to a almost OE spec 7 blade flex fan. Im hopeful that coupled with my OE HD cooling radiator will keep my little built up 302 cooled. I didnt know you were planning on upgrading to a 220A 3G alternator. Im trying to keep from talking myself from the 130A 3G down to the 95A 3G due to only being able to run one V belt lol. Bill - Wow, that is one heck of a project on the engine. I had no idea that the oil supply and returns were so different. And then there's the registration. Plus the ignition. That is a major project - almost as big as going with EEC-V. And on the alternator, I agree with where you said the fans are. But I'd like to know if the slots are intakes or exhausts as that could alter the way I make the bonnet. As for the extra fan, my nephew mentioned that as well. But I would rather not do that - if the cover works adequately without it. And I think it will, although I'll test it with my thermocouple when the time comes. Rusty - I've seen a spec somewhere that says the LRC function is only enabled at idle, although I don't know where I saw that. But it is really a ramp and not just a delay. You can see that in a chart and discussion I posted here. As for the heat, remember this is a 460 and they generate a lot of heat. And all of that heat has to come out regardless of what radiator you have. So even though I have a brand new 4-row aluminum radiator, when the truck is sitting there idling, as it would be when winching and airing up the tires, there's a lot of heat. But I don't know that I am going with the 220A alternator. I think I will, but it hasn't been decided - partially because I've not found the one I want. As Jim pointed out, Power Bastards appears to be using the small case unit, which seems counterproductive as that would give less room for the cooling air. I've not heard back from them on the email I sent them on Thursday, but it has been the July 4th weekend so maybe the one to reply has been off since then.

Cool, in every possible way. Big Blue went to the family reunion on Saturday and on the way down at about 11 AM we had to cut the A/C back quite a bit with heat. But when we left at about 5 PM after it sat all day and baked at almost 100F it was ~15 minutes until it really started getting cold. However, then it really did get cold, so I think it is working properly. I said all that to ask if that is par for the course on these older systems. I think it is but when I get in a new vehicle and it gets cold very quickly I start to wonder.

Progress! On the camber bushing, I'd go back with an adjustable one so the alignment shop can dial it in.

That's a monster! What originally drove the pump? A PTO shaft? Why can't it be used?

1500 RPM is mighty low. Do you know what your AFR is? And are you sure you got the cam installed on the marks?

Wow! That's creative. Well done!

I just posted info on my mockup for a bonnet over the alternator in this post on the Concerning Conversation With DB Electrical thread. But while I was under the hood I discovered something. Looks like I need to make a new jumper and turn the connector upside down. Sure glad I turned the battery around and put the ground near the fender.

What gearing are you running? The OD ratio on an AOD is quite high, so if you are running 3.0 gears the engine is hardly turning on the highway. But it looks pretty under the hood.

Ok, here's my CAD & hacksaw results. I think it would be made out of sheetmetal and would be held in place by replacing the pivot and clamp bolts with studs with nuts welded to them to allow tightening, but with a stub sticking out to go through the "bonnet" as I'm calling it. But this bonnet is a bit small as it isn't big enough to allow the clamp bolt/stud to come through. And, it doesn't fully cover the front of the alternator. Having said that, I don't know if the slots are inlets or outlets, so I may spin my spare alternator up in the lathe and see. Here are a bunch of pics, but I'd really like your input. PLEASE!

I dont think heat would be a problem, have to remember the cars and trucks these 3G alternators were installed on were a lot more cramped with way higher under hood temperatures than our trucks would ever consider having with how much room under the hood we have. Thats what I thought of doing, still I would love to have the old tools even if I dont use them just as a collectible to go with the car. Regulator I bought has a part number of GR-818 on the box and the regulator itself has a part number of F5RU-10316-BA and its a new Motorcraft made regulator. I tried looking information up on it and all I could ever find was from Manic Electric Motors where they state its a Ford 3G series IR/IF alternators with a 12V spec, A-Circuit, I-S-A Terminal, 14.6 Voltage Set Point, w/ LRC, White and that its application is 1995 - 2000 Ford, 1993 - 2002 Ford Europe, and 1995 - 2001 Mercury. I would be interested in seeing what the temp curve would be if there is any difference. I am also curious in difference from our trucks to late model vehicles that had the 3Gs from the factory. I know my truck currently with the OE engine has hardly any heat under the hood when running and even with the fan pulling air off the radiator the air is not that hot even with a 180* thermostat. Yet late model vehicles at work seem to always have super heated air under the hood and when the fans are pulling air through the radiator the air feels like a blast furnace. I do kind of wonder if going back to a 195* thermostat on my truck if it would result in that big of a chance in under hood temps and air coming off the radiator itself. Its a shame no one ever came up with an idea for stealing GMs idea with the crank pulley using one multi rib belt for just the alternator and retaining OE V belts else where. Its something I played around with and wondered if I could fit a narrow multi rib belt between the V belts and my bolt on dealer A/C V belt. I really dont want to change everything over to serpentine belt on my truck just from a cost stand point but I also hate the idea of slippage with just one V belt hence why I bought a NOS Motorcraft 3G regulator with the soft start regulator with hopes it wont slip on me. Only other thing is if I can get a wrench on the alternator good enough to tension the alternator belt tight enough to walk on. I dont have to worry about wiping out a water pump since the alternator on our trucks run off the crank pulley only. Bill - I'm not sure I understand the conclusions you are drawing from the CAD work. (Get it? Drawing CAD ) Rusty - My regulators are from National Quick Start and are "F795 - Voltage Regulator, 12 Volt, A-Circuit, I-S-A Terminals, 14.6 Vset, 2.5 second LRC, For Ford 3G Series Alternators" and the sister - F794 that is the same but w/o LRC. And despite the 14.6 volt set point I never see higher than about 14.3 - although I will admit I've not checked at 0F, and given the temp curve I posted previously maybe that's where the 14.6 happens. Also, I'm not saying heat is a "problem" right now. Just that I think it is what is causing the voltage set point to come down. I've not checked the air temp off the radiator on Big Blue, but it is surely in excess of 200F as the ambient is in the high 90's right now and the discharge air is HOT. And I'm running a 180F 'stat. And the tip of the fan, where the most of the air is coming from, is almost perfectly lined up with the pulley of the alternator. So the fan is blowing that really hot air directly into the alternator. However, I think if I put a 220 amp 3G in that the heat may well be a problem. And that's why I'm working on a design to get "cold" air to the alternator. (Next post.)

I assumed that the thermocouple was just at the end of the wire and I could extend it with copper. Duh! Glad you mentioned that. I'm working on a CAD (cardboard-aided design) for what I'm thinking about...

I should have pointed you to TSB 90-16-07 in the first place. It takes you through an inspection process for the clutch linkage and then discusses installing the reinforcement plate. As for replacing the fluid, it is a pain to bleed these systems, so if I wanted to replace what is in there I'd pull it down to just enough in the bottom of the master to ensure air does not get in and refill with new. then I'd pump that through and refill as it gets low again. After a couple of rounds of that you'll have new fluid in and no air.

I was just thinking the same thing. I have a thermocouple for my DVOM and could easily test. But, with the hood open and sitting still the test wouldn't be as valid. So I'd need to extend the leads and put the DVOM in the cab to see what the inlet air temp to the alternator is. But that would be easy enough. On the other hand, if I'm running the winch I'll probably have the hood closed and effectively be sitting still. So maybe that's worst case and I could easily shut the hood to run that test. Then put the "hood" on the alternator and see how much it changes. That would prove whether the alternator can pull its own air effectively through the radiator support, short piece of hose, and the hood.

Yep and for me for my '56 its a pain trying to find all those specific tools such as the temperature probe for the regulator. But eventually I think I will find one popping up on ebay like I found a set of 5 NOS stainless steel beauty rings after about four years. But on the talk of the modern alternators, I know the real modern ones dont sense voltage and charge, they are excited by the computer itself to maintain voltage. Some have also gone so far to use a clutch on the alternator pulley where they will actually disconnect the alternator from the pulley once the battery is charged up. With that kind of operation, I would have thought the 3G`s would have been varying amperage output but maintaining voltage to the regulator preset. It looks like what's been posted that the 3G still operates like the old temperature compensated voltage regulators from 50 years ago and vary the voltage to vary the amperage. Going to be fun to see how my 3G does with its soft start regulator with its 14.6 volt set point and if it actually varies like other 3G regulators or not. Rusty - Please post the part # and manufacturer of your regulator. I suspect that there are regulators out there that have different temp curves, so it would be interesting to compare.

Looks good, Jimmy!

You are right, any cover would have to be fairly "loose" to ensure air can get to all of the inlets of the alternator. If it was very tight then only the inlets on the side where the "cold" air comes in would get air. But it could still have a tab that comes down between the belt runs to keep as much hot air from coming in there as is possible. And yes, this is theory. But you are also right that a fully-loaded alternator is on the edge, so providing it with much cooler air would be a big benefit. And, as you point out, the air from the radiator and A/C system combined are HOT. Yesterday as we were testing it was only in the 90's outside, but the heat coming out of the engine compartment was blistering. My nephew said he's recently worked on two different Porsche 911's, one of which has an air-cooled alternator and the other a liquid-cooled alternator. But even the air-cooled one is on a liquid-cooled stand so you have to drain the coolant just to remove the alternator! Anyway, the OEMs are finding that alternator cooling is needed on the high-output units. So maybe I should supply some cool air to mine if I go to a high-output unit.

Yesterday my nephew, the mechanical engineer turned auto mechanic, put his test equipment on Big Blue and we learned that measuring the alternator's output isn't easy as several things are going on at the same time that vary the output. For instance, when the voltage gets down to 12.7 the Cole Hersee battery isolator opens up and now the alternator is only charging the starting battery while the air compressor is pulling from the aux battery. So the voltage the alternator is seeing goes up and the current comes down. And when you push the "parallel" switch in Mission Control it only forces parallel for 1 minute. But about then the air compressor kicks off as it has reached 200 psi, so the load goes away. Meanwhile the varying load on the engine due to alternator output changes the RPM you are trying to hold with the throttle, which varies the alternator's output, which varies the RPM, which... But we finally got some glimpses of what the current looks like, and at a 750 RPM idle it looks like the alternator is kicking out ~60A. And it maxes out by 1500 RPM at 117A. So while the idle output is as much as the original 1G gave at full tilt, it isn't going to keep up with either the winch or the air compressor - neither of which we measured. We then talked through the various options to provide more current by raising the idle RPM: PTO: He was surprised that the PTO function doesn't raise the RPM. He has a Chevy Kodiak and it has a PTO switch which both shuts off the emissions monitoring and kicks the idle up to 1200 RPM to provide more alternator current. But unless I'm missing a parameter in BE this one doesn't do that, so he agrees it is out. Low Voltage Idle Adder: He liked this one somewhat, but since I'm not getting it working easily said I should move on... Idle increase for A/C: He really liked this one since it would be easy to implement, unlike the Low Voltage Idle Adder, and could be wired to kick in when either the winch or the air compressor is running. In fact, if either the air compressor has kicked off at 200 psi or I've turned it off manually, the switch on the dash would effectively be Fast Idle. We also talked about mechanical vs electrical fans. He's played with both approaches extensively on everything from side-by-sides to medium-duty trucks and has come to the conclusion that mechanical fans work better. As he pointed out, the 4500 Kodiak with a 6.6L Duramax they drove down yesterday has a mechanical fan. In fact, he said all of the Kodiaks have mechanical fans, although some of them like his have an electric clutch in the fan to override the thermal clutch and go to full lockup. So GM must have come to the same conclusion that mechanical beats electrical. That's all for now, more for later.

Thoughts, please? This just sounds like the kind of meaningless canned reply I would expect from an outsourced customer service agency. It's really hard to say if this says anything about the engineering of the product. It may just mean that the customer service end of DB has gone downhill... but who knows. In any case, I hope the product is still good - I just yesterday bought a DB alternator off amazon! lol While we're talking about 3G conversions, I found the 3G page very useful all-in-all, except the "choosing an alternator" tab was a little confusing at times. But I was able to sort things out by reading through the various threads on the subject. I ended up going with model AFD0028 130A with 8.25" mount spacing (which is referenced on the 3G page). Jim - I misunderstood. And I see what you mean. Yes, I don't know that I have an alternator cooling problem. But I now see that the alternator sits directly behind the tip of the fan blades, which is where most of the air from the radiator comes through. So it is getting hit with the hot air from the radiator and that is probably what is causing the set point to come down earlier and farther than I would have expected. Was talking to my nephew about this yesterday and he agreed with my assessment and was intrigued with my idea of creating a cover for the front of the alternator that just has enough room at the 3:00 position to let the belt in, but has a fitting for an air duct at the 9:00 position. That way the alternator could pull cool air from in front of the radiator and be shielded from the hot radiator air. Lucas - Thanks for the input on the 3G page. You are seeing exactly what I saw when I went back to look at it - confusion. It really needs to be cleaned up and organized - especially in the "choosing an alternator" area. And I hope your DB alternator works out good for you. Please let us know.

Thats the same with the Generators with the external regulator. My '56 Ford shop manual talks about having a temperature probe that snaps to the voltage regulator cover to measure voltage regulator temperature which you set to spec based off temperature to calibrate it as it is designed to vary voltage/amperage based off temperature to prevent boiling the water in the battery by putting too much voltage/amperage to the battery. Maybe this will help, this is from the charging system section out of my '56 Ford shop manual and it goes into detail about temperature compensation for the voltage regulator. It also has a chart with ambient air temp and voltage output. I dont know how well it will mesh with the specs for the 3G but it might help give an idea since I doubt Ford would have moved too far off of these settings. I would have expected with more modern alternators like the 3G that they would have maintained volage but only vary the amperage based off regulator temperature to prevent the boiling of the water in the battery. But I guess Ford couldnt get it to work just varying the amperage alone and has the voltage reduce as well. Which is a shame cause the NOS Motorcraft GR818 regulator I bought to swap to the 3G alternator I get has a voltage set point of 14.6V and I was hopeful that the voltage wouldnt drop below 13.0v since I know with my current 1G alternator when I come to an idle my H4 halogen silver star ultra headlights would dim slightly and my Dealer AC blower motor would slow down slightly. I was hopeful that I wouldnt run into this kind of issue with the 3G upgrade. Guess I will have to give it a go and see what happens. Jim - I don't have a cooling problem, but I'll speak to that on Big Blue's Transformation thread in a bit. Bill - Thanks, but I don't want to change to a different style alternator. I'm pretty sure that there are 3G's that do what I am looking for, but we shall see. Rusty - The regulator doesn't directly control the current. Instead it controls the voltage and the current is what it is. (I=E/R) But I wasn't aware that way back in the 50's they were varying the voltage based on temp. I don't know if all 3G regulators have this function built in. But the two I have certainly do. Maybe yours won't?

I did have one edge of the Coverlay cover start coming loose. I pulled that corner back and used spray contact adhesive to put it back on and it hasn't come loose. If I were to do it again I'd use spray contact adhesive on the whole thing.

Chad is right about the firewall, and it is hard to see it move. The best thing to do is to use something to measure any movement. Some have used a 2x4 on the radiator support back to the firewall to see if it moves. Others have put a tape on the radiator support back to the firewall. Then push the clutch in to see how much the firewall moves.

Yes! I was WRONG! S for stator not FLD for field. Thanks, Jim.

Bill - I think you may have the wrong wire. Was that wire LG/R? You want the W/BK wire, and there may not actually be one connected to the alternator. It will be marked FLD for "field" if I remember correctly, and I don't think it'll have any voltage when the engine isn't running. Anyway, glad the new carb is doing well. Dave - Your cooling system must have been pretty low. I hope that one clamp was the problem.

The Coverlay dash covers are much less expensive and, while not as good as a whole dash pad, are actually pretty good. I have one on Big Blue.

Bill - The Spal fans that Scott is using pull 19A each at full tilt. So with PWM that could probably be brought down to 15 or so per fan except at worst case. And the circuit would have to be fused for probably 50A. But I'm not ready to add another 30A load unless I do upgrade the alternator. Yes it would only happen when sitting still, and it would probably be only 15A if I'm running the winch as I won't need to be running the A/C so only one of the fans would probably come on. But I'm not ready to go there.