THE PORTAL HUB - Pinzgauers, Haflingers, Volvo 303s and more!

Is your battery really low in voltage?

nope. Charged to 95%, or so says my charger. It was replaced by Scott when he imported the unit. I'm not ruling it out however.

https://goo.gl/photos/BeKqXPUTi3mDZrcp9

The voltage regulator can be seen in these photos.

Time to make use of a multimeter! You need to check you haven't got a short circuit.

One of the things you could do would be to disconnect the wiring from the regulator that feeds to the dash and setup a mini separate wiring harness. The ignition can be left to run off he battery - it will take a while for it to lower the battery voltage to the point it won't run and you should have solved the issue by then!

So you need to disconnect the wire you have coming from B+ on the regulator after your fuse (you should keep that in the circuit). This will mean that you are no longer supplying a charging voltage to battery via the original wiring. Connect a meter set on voltage from the other side of the fuse coming from the regulator and earth. With the engine running you will only be measuring the voltage being put out by the regulator.

If you have access to another battery, even a small motor cycle battery you could put that in parallel with the meter and that will bring down the voltage if it seems high and steady the voltage if your meter appears to change it's reading all the time. If your fuse remains intact whilst you do this, then you know you have an issue with the rest of the wiring somewhere!

John

but i need to replicate the light circuit correct? Place a bulb between the two terminals, and then meter B+?

so, tried your suggestions and this is where i'm at... No fuse blown. Output was 16 volts with light hooked into circuit, and dropped to 6 volts when i put it back to stock.

I hooked up one of my Pinz batteries (65%) to rule out the battery, and it seems to run fine. Doesnt pop a fuse. Voltage was between 12 and 14 volts depending on where I tested. My lights were NOT on

I changed several things to get to this point, any of which may have solved the trouble (for now)

1) Stock switch only ran in #3 position. Position 1, 2 or 3 turns on the headlights/driving lights - always on in previous tests. Not on in this test. Someone was behind the dash, adding a push start button. Probably due to ignition switch issue. I replaced ignition on/start with a spare Kubota ignition switch.

2) Stock regulator was running at 19 volts. Switched to cheap import VW. Back to 12 at idle

3) Swapped battery for known good.

At this point I'm leaning towards the ignition switch as the cause. I know Scott replaced the battery, so i'm assuming the problem was apparent from the start, but the battery swapped masked this issue. I may eventually swap the stock voltage regulator back in just to test...

I guess im good for now

If you have a suitable garage you can take the battery to, they can do a drop test on it to tell you if it is good or not. Drop test means putting a heavy load on the battery and measuring the voltage. If it drops too quickly, then battery is faulty!

Good that you appear to have found an issue and that correcting that seems to cure things, a real pain when you can pin the issue on any thing specific!

John