Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

Learning by doing.

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

Nice work. It's always nice when you open something up and find pieces laying in the bottom. :lol: Cute little helpers too!

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

Fortunately there was no breakage and it just needed to be put back together.

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

Alternator Upgrade

**disclaimer: I learned everything I know about this from the internet

I picked up a Powermaster alternator and a “Full Power” kit from Mad Enterprises http://www.madelectrical.com/ about 3 years ago, and then we had a kid. And then another one. And now I finally got around to putting the alternator on. And now we have another kid on the way. Anybody got a suburban they wanna sell me?

Before we go any further, a few threads I couldn’t have done this without:

Color Wiring Diagram FINISHED
by board member boundstaffpress
http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=185856

Alternator Upgrade Wiring
by board member TheSeeker
http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=622743

The Powermaster alternator is not exactly a direct in-kind replacement for a few reasons. First, the old alternator harness plug is not the same shape as the plug on the Powermaster alternator. Second, I was looking to upgrade a few components of the charging and electrical system and install an auxiliary fuse panel while I am getting into it.
The new alternator is a Powermaster unit, part number 47294 advertised output is 90A at idle and 150A max. The “Proof of Performance” tag included with my alternator says it dynoed 99A at ide and 164A max.

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

The tricky part seemed to be the theory behind one-wire, internally regulated alternators and the use and installation of these units. I had stumbled upon Mad Enterprises via a 10-year old article in Hot Rod Magazine, and some of the literature on his website got me thinking about all of the different things that went into this install/upgrade. As I said before, I picked up a Full Power kit from Mad Enterprises and at that time I talked on the phone with Mark, the owner and brains behind the operation, and read some of his literature as well. I thought he had some valid points and a lot of my rant about 1-wire alternators, wire sizing, and current load is just my interpretation of his theories.

Cue the rant:

In short, most, if not all, high-performance one-wire alternator manufacturers tell you to run a big heavy gauge charge wire from the BAT post on the alternator to the positive post on your battery. (I actually bought a 7 ft long 6 gauge Powermaster charge wire when I bought the alternator as I was being steered down this path at the beginning.)

My best explanation of the problem with this approach is that the main power feed to the dash/firewall/factory fuse panel just got about 4 to 6 feet longer, and if the only new wire you installed was the charge wire to the battery, you are running power back to the main power feed through a wire that may not be adequately sized for the load.

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

My truck had a red 12 gauge wire coming off of the BAT terminal that went into a wire harness at the core support on the driver side. According to the wiring diagram this wire splits, one fork goes to the battery and functions as the charge wire, the other fork supplies the main power feed. If I disconnect this red wire and run a new heavy gauge charge wire, then the OLD 12 gauge charge wire becomes the supply path for the main power feed to the dash, and where it was originally intended to be downstream of the fork, it is now upstream. Also, you are now using the positive battery post as the main power distribution hub for the entire vehicle. So, I DO NOT want to do that.

Bottom line - Unless you are some kind of wiring wizard and you are actually going to do something that will improve the factory harness, keep that red wire coming off of your old alternator and connect it to the hot post on your new alternator. If you don’t you could be making things worse.


*Charge Wire sizing and battery charging requirements
How big of a charge wire do you need? Well, I guess it depends on 2 things.
One: how long will the charge wire be once you route it to your battery?
Two: What loads do you have on the charge wire, in addition to charging the battery?
I had an 8 ft piece of 8 gauge wire that was included in the Mad Enterprises goodie bag, so i did some quick math to see if that would work. Optima’s website says 1 to 12 amps is best for charging a lead acid battery, I have an Optima AGM, but whatever, i gotta get this done. I’m assuming I need to supply 10 amps to the battery to maintain it. As for the other loads, Watts / Volts = Amps, so 10A for my headlights (60W x 2 / 12V = 10A), 10A to charge the battery, and 3A for my HEI (don’t recall where I got that number) totals up to 23A, and my chart says 8 ft of 8 gauge wire is good for 60A, so this wire should supply PLENTY of current at the battery junction post. Also included in the Mad goodie bag was a 12 gauge fusible link and a nice non-insulated terminal which I put at the alternator end of the charge wire.

Right about now you might be saying “Hey Ben, are you headlights actually drawing from the junction post at the battery? Then why are you considering that as a load at that point?” Well, you are right, the headlights are drawing power from somewhere downstream of the “fork” that I was talking about earlier, which is fed by the 12 gauge wire coming off the hot post on the alternator, and furthermore, I am going to put my headlights on relays in the near future, so that I’m not routing that circuit all the way through the switch on the dash.

This seems like a good time to bring up the 1-wire alternator topic again.

If I had trashed all the wires coming off of the old alternator then I would have lengthened the main power feed by a good 6 feet, and through a 12 gauge wire at that. Now let’s look at some rough numbers and assume that we have about 6 feet across the front of the truck as that wire travels along the core support, then about another 4 feet from the turn by the driver side headlight to the firewall connector. That’s 10 feet for those of you who went to school in Shelbyville, anyway, my chart says 10 feet of 12 gauge wire is good for 20A, and I would be pulling everything through that 10 ft stretch of 12 gauge wire. Now the load to charge battery isn’t included in that, but we didn’t even bring up brake lights, turn signals, and whatever other accessories you may have scabbed on to your poor 40-year old wiring harness. I may be over-simplifying things, or I may be overlooking something else altogether. At the end of the day you may not have any problems with the 1-wire setup, but, it would be one step closer to an electrical issue.

*Idiot light- discussed below, if you want to maintain functionality of the warning light, you are going to need to connect it to the new alternator somehow.

*Voltage regulator - bypassed using home-made jumpers
Even though I am installing the one-wire alternator as a 3-wire alternator it is still internally regulated and I will need to bypass the original voltage regulator. I say bypass because I am going to use the blue and white wires coming off of the alternator. I want to be able to switch back to the original configuration, so to bypass the voltage regulator I made some jumpers to bridge the terminals at the voltage regulator harness using 16 gauge wire and male spade terminals. The blue wire gets bridged to the red wire which runs to the junction post near the battery. This wire is the voltage sensing function and it tells the alternator what the voltage is at that post. Since the blue-red wire is connected to the junction post at the battery, it is always hot. The white wire gets bridged to the brown wire and maintains functionality of the warning light, I guess to tell you if you throw a belt, or if your alternator quits charging. The white-brown wire will be hot when the ignition is on. Now white wire goes to #1 post on alternator and blue wire goes to #2. There are some alternative methods for bypassing the voltage regulator, but I did mine pretty close to the “Alternator Upgrade Wiring” thread as far as I can tell.

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

photos

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alternator upgrade photos-2

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alternator upgrade photos-3

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alternator upgrade photos-4

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alternator upgrade photos-5

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

New Drawers!

Back to the back of the truck. This was a super simple project, the hardest part was uncovering my table saw so I could use it.

The drawers are just 5-sided boxes made from 1/2 plywood and 2x12 ripped down from 11.25" to 10.25"

No tracks, no slides, just plywood sliding on steel.

Each drawer is 6 feet long with a divider at the midpoint, and about 21.25" wide inside of each drawer.

The length of the platform, length of the drawers, and dimension from the end of the platform to the edge of the tail gate when it is down allow me to pull the drawers a few inches shy of clearing the platform and the midpoint still not being beyond the edge of the tailgate. If I have more weight in the far compartment than in the near compartment then the drawer should balance nicely. In the last photo I have the drawer pulled pretty much all the way out and it balances fine.

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

Just got back last night from a trip to Houston. We were there for the Lonestar Throwdown show. Saw a lot of nice truck and I'll post up some pictures later. Put 892 miles on Daisy, averaged 10.7 mpg, and the only problem I had was running a little hot when I stopped on the shoulder after driving about 75+ mph on our way out of New Orleans. I guess she didn't like running hard, then pulling over and not getting the airflow through the radiator. I took it easy after that and she seemed to do fine.

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

A few of our fuel stops

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

Did an interview about Daisy with Ronnie for C10 Talk. It's the Lonestar Throwdown episode, available to listen to now. Go check it out!

https://www.c10nation.com/

http://c10talk.libsyn.com/lone-star-throwdown

Episode #95, 8 killer interviews from builders from across the country.
Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Iowa, Louisiana, Colorado and Japan, Yep - Japan!!

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

More pics from LST 2018

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

LST 2018 pictures

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

Lonestar Throwdown 2018 pictures

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

more Lonestar Throwdown 2018 pictures

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

Thanks for taking time to post up the pics. There definitely looks to be a little of everything there.

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

LST 2018. Ronnie from C10 Talk, aka board member CheyenneShop

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

Interesting photos.

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

Scored this last night. 1979 Warn 8274.

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

Nice. Start a winch install thread when you go through it!

j

Re: 1972 K10 - Daisy
 

LOVE THOSE OLD 8274 WINCHES, I HAVE ONE TO PUT ON MY 72 ALSO, JUST NOT SURE IF I WANT TO MAKE A MOUNT FOR IT OR GO WITH THE WARN WINCH BUMPER,please post pics of how you mount it