<VV> ARGH!!! Simple electrical stuff driving me crazy! UPDATE

[Bill Elliott]

>At 01:30 PM 6/9/2005, you wrote:
>>It's obvious that I have some harness voltage drop (~1v) between the 
>>battery and the front wiring bus... but why was that not causing a problem 
>>before?


Thanks for all of the off-list advice.  

What I did was assume that it was NOT working correctly before (even though it seemed to be) and start 
by checking out each connection. What I found was like an intermittent failure, but in reverse. It was 
intermittently working correctly!

I found a variety of  issues... the main battery cable loose in the molded clamp, the main feed from the 
alternator corroded and coming apart at the butt connector at the clamp, and the old fashioned circuit 
breaker in the main feed to the front wiring bus heavily corroded and the connectors also corroded. I 
replaced the battery clamp and alternator feed, removed the old circuit breaker and put in a new one 
with screw connectors.

This _completely_ cured the front bus low voltage situation. It wasn't that the alternator or battery was 
bad, but the corroded connections couldn't pass enough current to keep the voltage up under load.

Bill