i replaced my alternator since it was bad but since i replaced it and after driving it for 30 minutes i could smell something in the cab like burning crap. stiffed around and sourced it to my amp gauge the casing felt warm but the terminals was hot and the gauge was barely off 0 and so i decided to snip the wire going to it. what could be my problem?
Possible poor ground connection or positive wire connection to/from the aftermarket amp gauge either at the battery + connection or the device it is measuring. This can cause a overheating condition. Could be an internal problem of the amp gauge itself. What does the amp gauge measure the amperage of?
it is spliced to the fusable link coming from the alternator that was connected to one side of the solenoid
If the output of the alternator exceeds the capacity of the the amp gauge it could cause the overheating. What is the capacity of the amp gauge, 50 amp - 100 amp? Ideally the shortest distance and largest gauge wire with the proper size fuse/fusable link would be needed from the output of the alternator to the battery. A better indicator of alternator output and battery condition would be a voltmeter. The voltmeter can tell battery "storage" before cranking and after cranking the output of the alternator. A fully charged battery would be around 12.7- 12.8 volts before cranking. A properly working alternator would supply 13.4 - 14.7 volts, anything over 15 volts would damage the battery and or accessory equipment.
the battery is reading 12.6 and the alternator is putting out 13.9 loaded and 13.6 unloaded amp gage goes up to 60 but it would barely get past zero i wired the old one up that goes in the cluster and it works fine for some reason and it is showing normal.
Something wasn't right if it was getting that hot. Sounds like it was wired this way from your description:
yep you hit the nail on the head i guess who ever wired it before shouldn't been working on it. but everything is working fine now go figure im been repairing a lot of rigging that was done to it before i got it and none of it was my uncles doing's. i did fix a dead short for caused by the radio it had power to it all the time even with the key off and i removed the wire from the circuit and all seems fine now.
