[Shotimes] Semi-OT: '95 SLO Charging system

[Jon Heese]

Man, I'm just not having good luck with my cars today.  I just posted 
about my '95 ATX with the fuel delivery problem, and now my '95 Vulcan 
SLO has decided to stop charging the battery...

While the car is running I had funky radio "skipping" when I turned the 
headlights on and the dash lights were way too dim (the dash clock was 
very dim and faded out from left to right).  So I charge the battery 
with jumper cables from my dad's truck.  After removing the cables, the 
dash lights/radio are back to normal.  Voltmeter on the battery says 
12.52V (engine off).  Low, but it's not been charging long, so not a 
very good test.

Start the car, voltmeter on the battery says 12.15V.  Great, so it's 
definitely not receiving any charge from the alternator.

So I pulled the alternator and took it to AZ (apparently it's illegal 
for them to test it on the car in my county, go figure) and it passed 
all three tests (alternator, rectifier, regulator).  Okay, pop the alt 
back in.

Next, I checked the battery with a load tester: showed ~11-12V under 
load, which is in the green area of the tester (it's only about 2 years 
old).  Okay, so it's not the battery.

Interestingly, after putting the alternator back in and letting it run 
for a minute or two then shutting it off, the battery reads 12.29V. 
While idling, it shows 12.50V, goosing the throttle jumps it to ~12.75. 
  So now it *is* charging, just not very much.  Maybe I knocked some 
crap loose on the alt connections?

So I test resistance from the pos battery terminal to the big alternator 
cable terminal: ~4 ohms.  Resistance from the battery pos terminal to 
the megafuse is also ~4 ohms (as a reference, my meter shows ~0.3 ohms 
touching the probes together).  Seems like the alt cable resistance is a 
bit high, but it's not like I can just swap it out, it's all in the 
wiring harness...

Ideas?  Thoughts?  Anyone?

Regards,
Jon Heese