Been running the Denso 60 amp for many years wired directly to the battery via a + bulkhead on the firewall and noticed as I was testing a carb that it's at 15.2 volts. Do I need to add a resistor or something or is it going south.........used to be 14.7........... Thankxxx.........

No resistor needed, nor will it work. Problem probably lies with the voltage regulator or the voltage sense wire that tells the VR what the battery voltage is.

If it's the Denso 60 I'm thinking of you have a 2-pin plug in the back side. Actually 3-pin but the third wire is for the instrument cluster battery lamp. One wire is a battery feed to power the field, the other, smaller of the two, is the voltage sense that should be reading battery voltage via the ignition switch, or custom wiring.

If there's low voltage sense then the VR will react by increasing field strength which results in greater alternator output. Unplug and measure voltage at the small wire on the alternator harness that plugs into the alternator. Ignition on it should read source voltage. Plugged in it should read within half a volt of source voltage. The source being the battery.

Ya Cab mentioned something similar about how the alt. will over compensate for weak batteries so I will test my new 1150 for the Dart and pay attention to see if it gets back in the 14.5-14.7 range like it normally runs........thankxxx........

check to make sure you have a solid ground on the engine - that is the most common issue with an alternator that is over charging

I had a similar issue with my denso a while back and it was due to the voltage sense wire seeing low voltage. I taped into the original harness and happened to use a lead that only read 11 volts no matter what. Very strange but I believe it had to do with the 40+ year old starter switch assembly in the factory column. Anyway - I found another wire that read closer to what the battery was seeing and it was good to go.

Let us know what you find.

The engine has a few good grounds and the sense wire and I guess it's the keyed wire are hooked to buses I wired in a few years ago and are fine plus most of the factory wires are gone. Starting to think it's the 10 year old gel batteries as I need to put it on a charger more than ever........too busy to mess w/it now but maybe over the weekend I can mess w/it some more...........

I'm assuming that you are using an external regulator... The regulator needs one wire that reads the same as battery voltage, and it must be "switched power".
The other wire is a varied ground to "turn on" the windings, based on reference voltage(the switched power wire.) But wait- there's more... The regulator NEEDS a good case ground to function correctly. This is often overlooked. The mounting holes are purposely cone shaped to dig into the firewall metal. Over time it can corrode. Or maybe the beast just shook it loose.

No, the Denso is internally regulated and this just started 10 years later after installing it plus I still have zero time to look at it cos I'm neck deep in carbs..........

Might just be your batteries Dom. I have an old battery on the charger the other day. It was showing 16v. It is a 12v 4yrs old on its way out. Same battery i had in the car when the volt meter showed 14.5v but only 14 with a newer battery. Not sure, but if you momentarily unhook big charge wire and put your volt meter on the post while its running wouldnt it show the output of alternater?

My voltage regulator went south while driving at night. The headlights all of a sudden went super bright then popped. Turned on high beams and in few second they popped. All lights that were on gave up the ghost. Happened to just be pulling into one horse town in Illinois. There were only a few hot rod high schoolers awake at 11:50 PM. They loved my car and called the local auto parts owner and woke hime up to sell me all the stuff. Almost never touched the car. About 6 kids put all new bulbs and regulator like they knew the car and off we went. 71 Challenger. From pulling over to leaving it was about 45 min. Super great people! Need to look up that town.

Damon

Low batteries can fool you but to check them you need to test the amps also. The vol reg is set off volts so if the battery volts of the reg volt sense wire is low the reg will give it more field voltage to put out more but it still wont read a high volt reading. Say your battery is low and reading 11.9 volts when it starts well then the reg will give the field more volts for more alt output and the alt may now put out 60 amps but the battery volts may now read 12.8 and climbing slowly. But it will only go to the vol reg setting which will be around 14.5 or so according to the outside temp. It wont push the volts way up with low batteries but it will show alot more amp output of the alt until it reaches the voltage setting of the reg. I had a bad battery where the voltage reading at the battery would not go over 12.6 even when I full fielded it. Then when I read the alt output it was putting out 50 amps at an idle but the volts would not climb up because the battery was bad. It would take in amps but would not bring the voltage up. My point is a low battery wont show a voltage reading over the normal reading of around 14.5 as it will show alot of amps charging the battery back up but the voltage wont go past the normal readings. And as the battery volts comes back up close to normal readings the amps will start to drop back to normal readings. To me yours sounds like either a low voltage reading on the voltage sense wire or the reg in the alt is going bad. Ron

Mopardamo - that's an awesome story! Thanks for sharing.

Lots to look at so thankxxx guys and maybe I can mess w/it tomorrow..........

My Savoy has been charging 14.8-15.2 for over 5 years with zero issues
Gus

If you have AGM batteries it is best to keep your charging voltage under 15.

Mine are old Orbital gel batteries........

They are actually AGM not gel, common misunderstanding.

Cool then, thankxxx for the education...........

After a solid trickle charge, it's now back to charging bet. 14.5-14.8 so low batteries even though I drive it OR may the alt. is saying goodbye...........

Your batteries are ten years old, they are trying to say goodbye lol.

If you don't drive it for extended periods of time you might have to put a charger on it occasionally. A short drive will often not let the alt do its job long enough to put back in what you took out by starting it. In addition as batteries get older they will lose more voltage at rest than when they were new. Your batteries have a few more years left if you just keep doing what you are doing,