Recently, I needed to rebuild the engine in my BJ8 and therefore took advantage of this to upgrade the wiring. Following the advice of several posters on this site, I modified the headlight circuits to include relays. After, reinstalling the engine and a bit of recommissioning everything is running great, with the exception of two issues. First, the ignition warning light remains on after starting and in fact increases brightness as the RPMs increase. This suggests to me that the warning light circuit is “seeing” the current from the generator when the generator is at full output. My understanding of the control box. Second, the headlights come on when the generator kicks in regardless of the status of the dash switch. The dash switch does control the pilot, taillights and head lights when the engine is off. When I start it, the headlights don’t come on until the engine engages suggesting that the current is coming from the generator. I’ve tested the generator by pulling the leads to the D and F and bridging these and then measuring the voltage with the engine running. As it should the voltage builds well above 12. Also, I can see charging on the battery when the engine is running. Given that I see both the ignition warning light and the head lights on when they shouldn’t be I am pretty sure these are caused by the same thing. It seems likely that there is some wrong in the current/voltage control systems. The warning light usually comes on when the voltage in the white wire coming from the starter switch is higher than the voltage in the brown/yellow wire coming from the D terminal on the generator. It seems that this light could also come on if the balance went the other way. The box is fairly new, but perhaps I need to swap in a new one. Is there any other possible cause of these problems?
Bruce
Bruce