I may have over thought this whole issue, so wanted to request sane input. Bought an 85 3/4 ton Ram this weekend. The guy who owned it wasn't exactly mechanically inclined. The alternator had froze up on the truck and he tried replacing it and then the regulator without success.

His solution was to just cut the belts, leave the alternator off and drive off the battery, recharging it once in a while. After one of the 16.5" tires blew out (down to the chords) he decided he couldn't afford to do any more on the truck and put it up for sale. I figured it would make a good beater truck and the price was right.

I'm reasonably sure he fried the fusible link that supplies power to the alternator, as the lead is dead. I've looked for a fair amount of time trying to locate the fusible link behind the driver's wheel well, where it is supposed to be.

I'm not really concerned about the amp gauge working. Can't I just run a new lead direct from the battery to the alternator and call it good? It's a 65 amp alternator. I could fuse the lead with an inline fuse if you thought it was necessary. Thanks in advance.

sure can. just get an 10 gauge to the pos side of the battery and you should be able to charge from there.

if you still are not getting a charge, you can wire in the voltage reg seperatly too.

just tap off the battery for 12 volts and get a key on hot to wire a relay in to power the vr. or you could tap off the key on hot directly, but it would be cleaner voltage through a relay.

check the BATT wire running along the pass side VC some have a spade plug some dont.

on my 85, I kept blowing alt/VR/headlights/fuses till I found the burnt plug. just as it get to the firewall/wireharness.

I also cut open the rubber triangle piece on the driver side inner fenderwell, 1 wire from batt and 3-4 fusable links off of it.

that is where you will start finding the fusable links. I can post some pics of my 85 and the wirenut fix I did to fix all the trouble.

now I go straight to that with every truck and patch it before I ever have trouble.

my 440 truck wireharness got striped down to a few wires totale to run the whole truck.

make sure the grounds are clean and check ground right off bulkhead connector at firewall.

if I had only figured that out before 6 headlight bulbs,2 radios, and all the dash bulbs in a 3 week time frame. 3 yrs and no truble since.

As stated you can run a wire from the alt to the batt and I would use 10 gauge. But intstall a fusable link or one of the larger fuses that can handle the charging current because if the alt output terminal or the diode pack shorts to ground you will fry that wire if unprotected. My battery is in my trunk and I ran the hot feed to the car right from the battery as I used a 70 amp fuse with round eyelet terminals on it so I bolted it to the battery cable end and bolted the other end to the eyelet terminal on the 10 gauge hot wire. I only needed a 70 amp fuse as my alt is only a 68 amp unit. I installed a simple voltmeter in my 63 because I took a 10 gauge shunt across my amp gauge to eliminate my 50 year old amp gauge and not have to worry about it going south. The amp gauge stays in the car but dont work as the shunt carries all the current now and I just read the voltmeter to see if its charging. Ron

Great input from 3 expert sources. Thanks much guys! I really appreciate your input. Off to the wiring!