Alternator Woes... Sense Wire?

[kb0nly]

Ok, the output of my alternator is all over the place, 12-15v depending on how it feels from day to day, but no starting or running problems yet thank god.

I got the schematic for the charging system and it shows that there is a orange and red wires on the plug that goes to the internal regulator. The orange is supplied by a 10a fuse in the underhood panel, fuse 30 alt sense 10a, but when i check the orange wire at the alternator there is only about .7 - .8 volts??

I assume that the orange wire should be at the voltage measured at the battery, after all how would it sense the output otherwise?

I checked the fuse, good, voltmeter confirms power on both sides of the fuse, etc.

So what's the deal here, broken wire somewhere? I probed the orange wire in the main harness coming over the engine under the plastic cover, still the same voltage, so it's not a bad connector.

Am i right on the orange wire at the alternator being at battery voltage? It sure looks that way according to the schematic. The other wire, the red one, when disconnected sets off the battery light in the dash, it goes to the PCM.

[kb0nly]

Here is the latest..

I ohmed out the orange wire from the alternator back to the underhood fuse panel, no connection. I traced it along the main harness and into the bottom of the fuse panel, all good. But from the bottom side of the fuse panel to the ouput side of the fuse for it there is no connection.

I removed the entire fuse panel, not that hard really since the large connectors are just bolted into the bottom and come out. But now i have another problem, i have the whole fuse panel sitting on the table but can't get the plastic bottom off the damn thing to see what the problem is inside.

Anyone know how to get the bottom piece off this fuse panel without breaking anything??????????

[kb0nly]

Got it fixed, but never did figure out how to split open that underhood fuse panel to get to the inside. I found an alternate route to connect to the output of the alternator sense fuse, and all is well.