Electrical/Charging System help request

[Scott1953]

Hi everyone.

This is my first car project. 1953 Dodge coronet 4 door. 6 cyl, 3 sp.

I have replaced the battery and cables, it is + grounded with size 0 cables (new). When the battery was new, I could start the car with no problem. Well, it must not be getting charged because it will no longer start the car. HOwever, hooking up a jumper battery will allow me to fire the car up and it will run all day long.

The wiring throughout the car is in pretty bad shape. and I have been replacing it one wire at a time, verifying the correct wire locations and sizes with an original shop manual. Well, tonight i pulled a new wire from the "BAT" terminal of the regulator to the ammeter thinking that this was the reason the batter wasn't charging. Started it up (with the jumper battery) and revving the engine i got a little bit of movement of the needle to the positive side. Then after a couple seconds, nothing. I did polarize the generator after doing the wiring (ARM to BAT, momentarily). Took off the regulator cover and restarted car. Revving the engine produced no movement of the cutout relay. My dad then closed the relay manually and the needle moved to the positive side, but not very much. Any ideas?

UPDATE

All the wiring has been replaced in the charging circuit. Still, after jump starting, i had no ammeter movement and with a volt meter on the battery, i saw no increase in volts (about5.8 to 5.9 running and revving).

I did the gennie test from the manual by trying to 'motor' the gennie using jumper from hot side of starter sol. to the arm terminal of the gennie. nothing. next step from manual is to ground the field terminal of the gennie and try the hot to arm jumper. this allowed the gennie to motor around. according to manual this points to the field to ground circuit of the regulator. well, after closer inspection my regulator does not look like the one in the manual. by that, i mean the circuits seem to be different. My regulator says "American Bosch RGS6G113". My manual says "AUTO-LITE VBE-6001A. Can anyone cross the two parts and see if they match?

Also, I still have a lot of wiring to do on this car as there is a lot of bare wire, disconnected wires etc on a lot of circuits. is this going to be a problem in trying to isolate and fix the charging circuit? I have disconnected the bus bar from the light ammeter that runs all the lights in the car. should i also disconnect all other wires from ammeter except the one coming from reg and the one going to the battery? Thanks a bunch everyone.

Scott

[Young Ed]

Scott do you have the shop manual. There are a couple good tests for generator and voltage regulator.

[greg g]

to quick test the genny with the car runnign and idling at a fast idel, with a jumper wire temprarily ground the field terminal you should see a fully pegged needle to the plus side on the ammeter. If not the genny is suspect. Could be as simple as needing new brushes. About 12 bucks from napa. and a 1o min job best done with the genny on the bench ( add 1/2 hout for R and R genny.)

[Scott1953]

performed some tests and have a couple more questions. Please see update to the original question above.

thanks,

Scott