Ammeter Bypass - what's this guy saying?

[Quiet Rebel]

He looses me on the third paragraph...then I pick it back up about around paragraph five.

Ammeter Bypass

[andy d]

the re-work between the alternator and the solenoid is pretty much what the wiring on my 88s is. the ammeter wiring has burnt up many older jeeps. jumping out the ammeter will prevent it from creating resistance=> heat => fire. the re-work will help out the wiring in general. it shortens the distance the juice has to travel to get to the battery. distance is key in dc transmission

[Joe Guilbeau]

Originally posted by Quiet Rebel:
He looses me on the third paragraph...then I pick it back up about around paragraph five.

Ammeter Bypass

Thinking about doing this?

The procedure would be to remove the Ammeter from the charging circuit, in most folks minds, thereby deleting the hi-amp current path from the alternator through the wiring to the firewall, through the plug to the ammeter, and then from the ammeter through the firewall and back to the solenoid terminal and then to the battery.

There are a couple of ways to proceed with this in mind. One can take both connections on the ammeter and place them on one terminal of the ammeter, this prevents any current running through the ammeter, however the current is still running thru the firewall and back. To counter this, the wire that routes the alternators output can be removed from the alternator and run to the solenoid where the battery positive post is located.

Now you have a double wire or parallel circut for the battery to send to the rest of the vehicle, however you need to provide a fuse in the 2nd half of the parallel circuit, so put a fuse in that RED wire and replace the fusible link in the YELLOW wire also, basically you are doubling up on the wires that supply power to the vehicle from the battery and fusing both wires in parallel.

Now we need to take a look and the alternator and route its output directly to the solenoid post with the Positive Battery Terminal connection, and fuse this wire also.

So, the alternator's output is fused, and both wires from the solenoid to one side of the ammeter are (both) fused, so the Jeep is well protected.

[Rande]

One more thing I would like to add. If you upgrade the amperage of you alternator, you must upgrade the size of the wiring and the terminals used on the wire at the connections. Big wire stuffed into an undersized terminal is bad.

[Gawdzilla.]

here's a nice how to of what Joe said:

http://www.madelectrical.com/electricaltech/amp-gauges.shtml

[pb]

If you put a heavy gauge wire from the alternator to the soleniod, can't you leave the amp gauge connected. It would be in parallel and the electricy would follow the path of least resistance...right? I would still like to have a functioning gauge that looks like the rest o the orginal ones.

[Gawdzilla.]

I would think so. The point of bypassing the ammeter is they tend to fry wires after time and may cause some collateral damage on the way.

[jode]

Hang on - I am not sure what you are talking about, but if you are saying what I think you are saying, then you are wrong.

Ammeters measure the amount of flow through a wire. If you decreases the amount of flow (by running another circuit with less resistance in parallel) then you are going to decrease the reading on the ammeter and render it innacurate.

This is not the case with a voltmeter. In a voltmeter, the measuring is 100% independant of the current flow. You can flow .00001 amps and it will still read the voltage. So what you are describing would work with a voltmeter, but will NOT work with an ammeter.

PS - ammeters suck

[Bob Barry]

Originally posted by pb:
If you put a heavy gauge wire from the alternator to the soleniod, can't you leave the amp gauge connected. It would be in parallel and the electricy would follow the path of least resistance...right? I would still like to have a functioning gauge that looks like the rest o the orginal ones.

You could do that, but the Ammeter would always register "0" charge, because, as you noted, the charge to the battery would follow the path of least resistance. I had mine set up this way for a while, and the ammeter never budged.

[xtapa]

Has anyone found a voltmeter that will fit in the stock hole on the older ammeter jeeps? I want to replace mine with a voltmeter, but don't really want to start hanging gauges under the dash.

[Joe Guilbeau]

The use of inductive clamp ammeters renders this particular gauge a great idea for checking the charge rate going into the battery and the battery's discharge rate...just realize that this is always changing depending on loading conditions and the amperage that the alternator is delivering to the battery. Along with the battery voltage and set point of the alternators regulator.

Then with the addition of a voltmeter, you have a good idea of the condition of the alternator regulator and the battery maintenance, especially during cranking.