My friend has a 1968 Camaro (6cyl 250). He had a dead shor and the battery was getting drained. After checking the fuse box by pulling out each fuse and checking to see if anything was still live everything turned out ok. Then we unpluged the Voltage regulator and that seemed to do the trick.
Here is my problem. After changing the regulator the battery is now charging at 16 amps which seems to high. I did notice that there is a ground wire coming out of the firewall and setting next to the regulator but not connected.
Should this ground wire be attched to the regulator?? Thus making the regulator function.
Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

buy a new regulator that should do the trick

 

Hope it is charging at 16 Volt, as 16 Amp isn't much of a charge. Get a test Voltmeter and check across the battery terminals with the engine at a fast idle, you should be reading around 13-14 Volt, turn on all acessories, lights, etc.. Bring engine up to around 1800 RPM and the voltage should still be in range. See if the regulator has an unused ground terminal, otherwise attach the ground cable to one of the holding screws on the regulator. the regulator need a good ground reference to work properly. Considering the age of the car, it is a good idea to clean and tighten all of the ground starps.

 

Yea, I meant 16 Volts.
Now that I changed the regulator and put the ground wire to it, it started charging at 13 volts, but now my battery is dead.

It stayed charged for w week until I added the ground wire. After adding the ground wire the battery was dead overnight.

Could this mean I have a bad altenator?? ( Diodes)

Thanks