Before you engage in any electrical trouble shooting, may I first suggest that you examine every battery, generator, regulator, switch, terminal, etc, which is in the charging circuit and make absolute sure that every screw, nut, and lockwasher is sufficiently tight..

First off, you will need a volt-ohmmeter to measure battery voltage and generator/regulator output. I don't know how experienced you might be with one of these, but when measuring voltage the black wire *always* should be attached to the grounded frame or battery negative terminal, and the red wire is always the one which you will probe for voltage at any given source or terminal.

By touching the red wire to the battery positive terminal with engine cold, you should see anywhere in a range of 11.0 -12.5 VDC, which should jump up to about 12.5-13.5 VDC when the engine is running. If this is not the case, and you see low or no indication of voltage increase when the engine RPM's are revved up, the next step is to check the generator and regulator for problems..

Remove the battery lead from the "BAT" terminal of the regulator and measure the voltage at the terminal with the red probe and the engine running, which should be the same as above, appx. 12.5-13.5 VDC, varying with the engine RPM.

If not, connect the red voltmeter lead to the regulator "GEN" terminal of the regulator, and you should see about 15-18 VDC at this point, depending on the RPM of the engine..

If not, disconnect at the regulator both the "GEN" and the "F" terminal wires from the generator. Connect the red voltmeter lead to the "ARM" wire from the generator and short the "F" wire from the generator to the grounded casing of the generator, and you should see anywhere from 25-40 VDC coming out of the generator.

-jm

You have to "flash" or "touch" the positive battery terminal to the armature or "A" terminal on the generator, which can be done with a short wire by very briefly shorting the BAT to GEN terminal on a Delco regulator or B+ to D+ terminal on a Bosch regulator. Do *not* touch the "F" or "DF" terminal.