77 Brave Dodge 440-3 alternator overcharging

Started by 77Nebraska, August 20, 2022, 11:00 PM

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77Nebraska

Howdy Folks,
I'm new to the RV world and just got done doing my maiden voyage from Washington back to my dad's farm in Nebraska where I'll be living in my RV and traveling around.  Things an absolute beauty!  So I was about 600 miles in on my trip and everything was going great until I hit a set of bumps at night time that got the ol' girl shacking and my headlights went out and came back on as I was getting ready to pull over.  So I kept driving and everything seemed normal until my voltage started to climb higher and higher until it was over 16 volts continuous.  So stopped at the next rest stop for the night and went to the parts store the next day.

I changed the voltage regulator with 2 different ones and was still charging high.  I changed the alternator and that seemed to help but I was still running at 14 volts consistant and can hear the alternator squeal if I'd rev the engine at all cause it was pulling the whole time.  I checked all the wiring I could and didn't see any glarring issues but I obviously have a bad wire somewhere and I'm not sure where the alternator pulls it's reading from so I'm just kind of stuck.  It already killed my fan circuit and even with the fan off any fuse will blow immediately once the key is turned on.  So I have issues for sure, but at this point I don't even really feel comfortable driving cause the alternator is always under load and driving home from my brothers last night which was about 10 miles I was up to 14.6 volts by the time I got to the farm.

So where does it take its reading from?  Is there any common problem areas for a 77' Brave that other owners know of? 

My only other option right now is just making a new wire harness from the voltage regulator to the alternator and bypass the old wiring harness like which is done in this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtB3g1kk8Rg.
And lets say I do that, would there be a suggested place where I should hook up the "read" wire that's better than others?  I know I'm gonna have a mission chasing the problems under the dash, but I'd just like to be able to drive it in the mean time until I have time to tear it down cause I have other work to do like the leaking steer box and stuff, just had some friends I wanted to see first before parking her for the work.

But man do I love that thing!  I'll post some pictures when I get a chance cause I have a Suzuki 350 dirtbike on the back and makes for one hell of a setup!