Hi Jarrid
Jarrid Gross wrote ..<
<You are right, your method allows you to see only the charging or
<discharge of the battery current>
Well thats all the ammeter can tell you .. how well the charging system is
working.
<Right or wrong, the way that I described is consistant with how factory
<Alpines were wired.
<See any alpine workshop schematic to verify.
Well where did you find an Alpine schematic with an ammeter? from your
first post..
"I looked at the schematic on T.J.s website, and tracked down
where the ammeter would go, had the schematic showed one."
In over 30 years of Alpine experience I don't ever recall seeing
a factory installed ammeter. This includes looking in quite a few show
rooms when they were new.
It has been over 25 years since I first I first worked out the addition,
but I still have most of the orginal factory docs.
In Rootes Manuel WSM.145 Section N P. 55 schematic 8411 "Alpine Wiring
Diagram" no ammeter is shown.
However in the same Rootes manuel the the alternator equiped
Rapier and Sceptre (schematic 8409 P 61 and 8410 P. 67 respectivley)
have ammeters wired exactly as I described.
Further if we want to read Alternator current why bother with a
+/- reading instrument.. due to the diode rectifier in the
alternators output only unidirectional charging current can
flow in the B+ lead.
Finally just as a sanity check, my method is consistant with the
ammeter hookup for a Honda and 2 Ford products I have the manuals
for here in my office.
<This is a matter of preference and semantics.
<However, I prefer to know that all the electrics are operating,
And how exactly will it do that? Will knowing the Alternator current
tell you a light bulb is burned out .. what about a dead wipper motor,
or a dying starter.. No way there are too many other variables.
There is no built in test with this level of Lucas electrics ! :-)
Much easier just to know if everything is OK that the reading should be
zero. If you really want to test a given load current just turn it on
with the engine stopped.
<not just that the battery is getting charged.
<Jarrid Gross
Steve F
*******************************************************************************
Steve Finberg W1GSL w1gsl(at)mit.edu
PO Box 397082 MIT Br Cambridge MA 02139-7082 617 258 3754
*******************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 10:05:44 CDT