found out my problem
Rick, sorry for the delay in responding. I had a couple guys from work come down to the boat and help me sort it out, here goes. I thought my alt. was shot because there was no charge with engine running, I just got this boat and the owner never explained the "polarity" switch. When the diesel is running and the shore power is disconnected the polarity needs to be switched, the alt. has a protective circuit. If you knew all that, here is what we did. Put a continuity tester on the batterys with shore power connected, they were taking a charge, put the cont. tester on the batterys with no shore power and WITH the engine running, no charge , thats when we flipped the switch and they started charging. I put a mirror down in behind the alt. and there is a sticker on the voltage reg. showing the terminal descriptions, this told us which ones are power and ground and alt. lead. They also found out that all 3 of my batterys were junk. They brought a battery LOAD tester, clamped it on each battery and pushed the button to find out that they drained almost immediately. I got all new ones, and learned to use the electrical syst. now all is well, I hope. We are going on a 4 day trip to the Mackinaw Bridge so I hope is is ok. I hope this helped, E mail me at www.blowinganddrifting@yahoo.com Talk soon, Dean
