Installed hard start relay, now generator light is on.

[Wartown81]

Bought a '74 Thing about 4 months ago. Really been enjoying it but have found increasingly that when I'd turn the key to start it there would be a delay before the motor would crank, and eventually turning the key wouldn't crank the motor at all.

Installed a hard start relay and now motor cranks and starts immediately. Awesome, but on the first drive after installation I started getting the generator light on while driving and idle. I'll be going through the book and troubleshooting but I'm curious if anybody has seen this happen before.

The only other maintenance performed was pulling the motor for new engine compartment seals on the same day.

Thanks

[FJBLF]

I found the generator and voltage regulator set up to be quite finicky. I changed to an alternator some time ago, and it is probably the best "Upgrade" I've done. It eliminates the voltage regulator too, so one less thing to fail.

Here you have a video on how I did it. Feel free to suscribe to the channel. If you find it useful, a like is always appreciated,


Link

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1972 VW 181 SAFARI 1500 cc GRB Trans-axle

[Glenn]

Installing the relay should not cause the generator light issue. You must of not connected all the wires correctly.

"The only other maintenance performed was pulling the motor "
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Glenn
74 Beetle Specs | 74 Beetle Restoration | 2180cc Engine
"You may not get what you pay for, but you always pay for what you get"

Member #1009

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[Wartown81]

[Johnnyw]

Wartown,

Do you have any pictures of your installation?? The relay is my next project .

Thank you, John.
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1974 Thing with a 1776
San Clemente, CA

[doublecanister]

Just to mention, I ran into this on my 73' last year but I was able to correct it.

Cleaned battery / terminals,
Replaced ground cable
removed / cleaned starter terminals and wire ends
cleaned a few ground terminal connections at various points
Added a missing ground strap for transmission.

You may have done some/all of this and it still didn't help?

I was chasing 2 issues:
a glowing gen light with headlamps on
and the sudden no start issue

all mentioned above did fix the issue.

Previous repaint got a lot of my ground points so had to clean a bunch.

Hope any of this helps!
T
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2020 - Mustang Eco Boost [High Performance]
1973 - Thing
1966 - Mustang GT- Fastback
1951 - Ford F1 pickup Flathead V8

[Wartown81]

[Wartown81]

[Wartown81]

Nope. Generator light back on during the ride home from work tonight. Seems it likes to appear when the headlights are on. The higher the revs, the brighter the light.

[doublecanister]

hey Wartown81,

ok so cleaning helped but you still have a gen light with headlamps on, are they higher wattage headlamps, or Halogens? (that could cause it)

With the gen light being "bright" that could be battery or Volt regulator best guess.

Do we know we have a good battery and it's connections are clean?

With headlamps on, it can probably add some 'glow' to the gen light, I don't remember the exact wattage of the stock headlamps but I think the generator output was (maybe 30 amps)
And time, extra electric needs from updated items like higher watt headlamps, radios, etc and bad/missing grounds/connections can trigger that glow as well as a flaky voltage regulator & other things.
There is a ground wire on the Generator itself that should be good and clean as well as the others.
Check your fuse box area spade connections (open the dash - clean all the spades) confirm all that stuff is clean - headlight switch connections too. (pretty much go over all connections, it should help). Spin your fuses in the fuse box, I've see that help before, sometimes they can lightly corrode from sitting.

There also "could" be a gotcha the headlamp switch, it is a switch, they can go bad....but i'm just spitballing here and that is one switch I did not replace yet either.

When I updated my headlamps to H4's I had a slight glow but it's no where as bright as it originally was after I did 'the cleaning' and added the grounds strap
after I got the hard start issue. So everything I've done so far has helped with the glow, and obviously fixed the hard start.

I believe my hard start problem was 2 things:
1: dirty connections at the starter
2: prev owner had tapped into the ignition switch main power wiring for the radio, I relocated that.
3: various spade connections cleaned (more to do)

Prior to my hard start problem at night I did have a slight glow on the gen light but never had any issues from it, but after investigating the "glowing light issue" it led me to cleaning grounds, spade connections (even got a spade cleaning tool - like a diamond fingernail file for spade female connections - from amazon) and I added the missing ground strap on transmission and a few other things.

Things I missed after thinking bout it:
Cleaning the ground on the generator itself - I cleaned the other wires on it but somehow overlooked that!
replacing the headlamp switch - or at least for a test.
Re-fixing some spliced wiring for headlights (I think my THING had fog lights on it at one time).

I've also been reading up on doing the Alternator conversion to help with a lot of this,
that may be a future point to consider. There is some work involved in doing that because of having to remove the Generator and all items in the way. But you get
55 amps I believe from the Alternator (or more depending on what you get).

Well hope any of this help you find the cause, but it very well could be a multitude of things and you may have to tackle this in small steps as process of elimination.

Keep on it and post what you find we'll try to help if we can.

Good luck with it,

T
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2020 - Mustang Eco Boost [High Performance]
1973 - Thing
1966 - Mustang GT- Fastback
1951 - Ford F1 pickup Flathead V8

[Wartown81]