[AMC-List] Javelin electrical problems

[Jonathan Jusczyk <j.jusczyk@xxxxxxxxx>]

I've got some sort of charging issue going on, made worse by the fact 
that no one has the parts I need so I have to wait a week to get 
anything done.

First things first, about six months ago when I was back home on break I 
  noticed hard restarting problems in my Jav.  When left overnight, it 
would start right up in the morning but if I went anywhere and it was 
good and warmed up, it would crank over real slow, but would start. 
Then I went back to school, and it sat.

So in the past month or two, I've been trying to get it back to daily 
driver capable.  First we thought it was a starter problem, with heat 
soak sending the resistance sky high, but soon found out the battery was 
crap.  Didn't think it was the battery at first, since it was pretty 
new, but it wouldn't hold a charge and eventually just popped and didn't 
work (now I'm thinking it might have been a result of excessive 
over/undercharging).  And then the starter relay was bad too, no 
clicking from the relay when I bench tested it.  New battery, new 
starter solenoid, wow it starts real nice!

Problem not solved though, as soon it's the same thing where it won't 
want to restart after driving for a while.  Putting a battery booster on 
when it's acting up makes it fire right up, and I took apart and cleaned 
up the starter and put in new cables, which leads me to think it's an 
alternator problem.  Then when I'm driving it at night for the first 
time, I notice the alt light is glowing dimly with the headlights on.

Off to Autozone, they throw my alternator on their testing machine and 
it fails the rectifier test.  One week and much hullabaloo later, the 
new alternator is in (two actually), we threw that on the tester just to 
check, and of course it failed the same tests.  For kicks we tossed the 
extra on there, and it did the same thing.  Thinking it was just a 
problem with their onmitest machine, I took it home and wired it all up. 
  With the car off and the new alternator hooked up, the alt light was 
glowing brightly.  With the key "on", the light would go out.

Back to Autozone, we order a voltage regulator too since you usually 
replace them at the same time (mine seemed to be working fine), once 
that comes in, probably a week from now, I'll try the new alternator and 
new regulator and see if this thing will finally work.  Other than that, 
I'm not sure what else there is.  I wouldn't mind swapping to a one wire 
alternator, does anyone have a part number that interchanges?

Arg, simple stuff like this that should be fixable in a few hours but 
turns to weeks waiting for stuff is frustrating...  Waiting for parts 
from Russia for my Dnepr gives me practice though.

Jon
'73 Javelin 304
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