1953 Chevy 3100 12V Conversion // Car Restoration

hi I'm Annabel trades and this is Isaac today we are jumping in super deeply into the electrical issues with my 1953 Chevy pickup truck hopefully we can get them all solved so that we can move on and get to the fun stuff which is the mechanical stuff before we get started I would love to give a huge shout out to workmen's friend for sponsoring this portion of the truck rebuild let's get started first and foremost of this truck restoration as it keeps hitting his head on that so there we go yes be careful so stuff so taking a look underneath the hood of this truck it actually became pretty quickly and readily apparent that someone had started a 12-volt conversion on this truck and just either didn't finish it or basically probably more likely made it look like it was done so that when we were testing out the truck we could look and everything appeared right and in fact it wasn't right so what we have here as we looked more closely is you know some junkyard writing this here is is a 12-volt generator but I'm honestly and taking a closer look at it I don't think it's the right one for this truck it obviously was from a junkyard and it wasn't even hooked up properly even if it was the right one so um we're gonna have to take this generator off and since we're going to that trouble anyway we're going to go ahead right now and make a 12-volt conversion these are old cars and people have you know it's been repaired and owned by many different people so no one's really to blame it's just things were done improperly so we now need to fix them another thing about this 12-volt conversion that someone had tried is that this voltage regulator is not right for a 12-volt generator so what we're gonna do is we're gonna trace back all this wiring and just find out what needs to be in here get rid of what doesn't need to be here is here's another thing that we just found two over here there was at some point some kind of attachments a winch or some other secondary piece of equipment and this wire was ground out was I mean on hand was grounded out on the frame of the vehicle so that in and of itself is creating a battery drop so we're gonna go ahead and get rid of that we'll take off all the battery drawers will retrace all the wires and make sure that things are where they need to be okay Isaac this is actually a really fascinating product it is a skin barrier cream so you know that if you put something on your skin it will enter your bloodstream in three seconds right this is a skin barrier you put it on like lotion and your hands are already filthy somehow even though you haven't actually done anything but I mean everything's fine anyway you put this on and it literally is basically like liquid gloves so we're about to get super greasy in here but because of this product we'll also then be able to just wash it off without any harmful chemicals we're not going to lose a bunch of skin I mean once again I it's already God but for me I get to keep my skin looking like farmer fresh is probably as best as it can ever get anyway this is a fantastic product whether you're in the garden or working on super greasy jobs like inside the truck that will keep your skin protected moisturized and nice and clean all right so let's get some wrenches get our hands dirty alright so first things first we've got to get this old generator off of here it's funny when I think my hands are too big one nice thing about these old trucks though is that they've got such a nice ending departments nice big ones all right so for those of you that don't know this is generator and back in the day this piece was attached to the fan on the engine and basically it's spinning recharged the battery so the battery is what initially ignites the spark to get the the the car started but then this thing will run and it'll recharge the battery that's why the battery doesn't just you know take a hundred Sparks and then die so the reason why we were having problems with the truck basically we got it on to the trailer we drove it back and then we drove it a little while and then it was done is because they had put a deep cycle battery which is something that can you know take a few more starts and and run for a little while longer than a traditional car battery so what was happening is that when that deep cell battery died completely we reached we put a new battery in but there was nothing charging it because this thing wasn't working properly because it wasn't hooked up properly so we're getting rid of this guy and we are going to finish out the 12-volt conversion and put in instead of a generator and alternator Isaac can you tell us a little bit about the difference between an alternator and a generator so it's a two-part system that are separate and they perform different functions you have simply the generation of the electricity and then you have the regulation and the electricity separate the alternator is going to do all of that in and of itself and it's if it's properly wired and properly grounded it's going to take care of all that that this multi-part system was doing alright that's pretty nice alright so that means that we could just completely get rid of this oh there really wasn't that much securing it on here to begin with so here we go alright so first things first we basically need to start unwrapping these wires and seeing what goes where and just tracing it all back this is a very long and laborious process that certainly electronics hey first of all electronics are really my weak point I don't I don't understand how electronics work very well and so I'm really excited to get past this part and get to the mechanical part which is the really fun thing cuz the one nice thing about these old cars is that they don't have very big electrical systems so it is possible for a someone like me to to figure it out but what I really like about engines and mechanical things is that you can usually physically see what's wrong and then fix it whereas the electronics are not quite as cut-and-dry okay so we're gonna trace these wire back and we're gonna basically just figure out what you what each and every one of them does so first things first this is a nice big one either key you down there yes okay so coming into the instrument panel what is this big like the thick red wire what does this one do it's going into the instrument cluster in a couple of different places it's fastened onto one of the light bars so are we thinking that it's lights or something yeah this is probably going to be one of some of your intermittent connections some of your things like lights and if you had any type of air conditioning or anything like that that you could switch on and off things it would be on a switch okay so how about since the ignition is the thing that we've been having the most problems with can you see if you can locate the ignition wires and wiggle those so we can trace those back we actually one of the wires coming off of of this big red wire is one of the ones going over the ignition switch okay we are gonna want to look up there and make sure all the connections with this red wire nice and secure okay Isak it looks like on the second post in there that there needs to be a positive line that's gonna go down to the generator that doesn't exist right now so let's let's make that up because we're gonna need that to run down to the alternator anyway [Music] it's gonna hold things tight and just kind of give this a little more strength up here ah spit that gun is putting off a thousand degrees that's insane oh hey it's a thousand degrees do you remember the part where that good as it sounds it agrees yes alright so here's that lead wire that we just made we're gonna just stick them onto the second post here touch up then we'll have it ready to attach to the alternator when we put that in go so this is a low amperage alternator and it will take the place of the generator so basically we're just going to get it in there and mount it up hook it onto the belt get it hooked in and see if it actually charges the battery just really quickly the thing about this is that on the generator hung a little bit lower and so the belt that was in there if we were to use this same belt I think it would it would just slip really badly so where you see this fan this has a pulley on it and if this pulley is not actually spinning the alternator or the generator then obviously nothing is charging and so because this doesn't have very much purchase here we're gonna switch out for a smaller belt and minute that's just because this alternator is a little bit different size than the generator that was in here before alright so this is a little bit smaller belt we're gonna put it on in there get it on all of the relevant pulleys etc and lift up the alternator stretch it on there now get it to drop down in there the only thing you just got to watch that it's not touching the fender wall here so we should be good yeah are you able to get to the end of that oh yeah absolutely alright so that's tight at the bottom of the arm the belts nice and tight here all we need to do now is connect this lead wire and we are gonna you know we have a few more things to do in the ignition box but other than that we're good all right let's get this ignition situation sorted alright we're gonna save you a whole lot of jibber jabber wire pulling basically it turned out that we had a whole cluster of wires here that were a shot and be too short to work with so we went through and did that exact same process we showed you making the positive lead for the alternator Andrey pulled all these wires for the ignition we wired in a new ignition switch and ran everything back to the battery the batter is still unhooked don't you worry but now we've got everything to the point that if we've got the electrical issues sorted which I think we do we can hook the battery back up and see if she's gonna start okay so literally all we need to do now is just hook this guy up tighten that guy on and thankfully we still have the quick-connect valve which I don't think we actually need anymore but we've got it so that's on all right let's see if this works all right so the proof really here is in the puddin let's just see if this actually works on real whoa okay a quick wrap-up about what we did to get the truck from where it has been in all of my previous content to right now is that when I purchased this truck it had the beginnings of a 12-volt conversion but it was basically will just believe the best and say that someone just hadn't finished their project however it was hooked up in such a way that led me to believe that it had already been completed so in my last video on this truck project we talked about switching out the battery changing all those battery cables and our intention after that whole project didn't work was to come back and add a whole new wiring harness instead of doing that we were able to trace back the connections we finished the 12-volt conversions and instead of using a generator we just went all the way over to and an alternator and now we have a system that charges the battery ASIS an ignition system that works and we need after hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of tracing wires and connections we now have a fully functional wiring system so that now the truck is in such a state that we can start diagnosing all the mechanical issues and that's what's coming next thank you so much for taking the time to watch this video and for supporting my channel in that way if you would like to support it in other ways you can find a link for my patreon you can also click the link below to find some and of all trades merchandise I hope you leave this video feeling challenged inspired and excited to get outside and do things with your own hands Cheers you

Channel: Anne of All Trades

Views: 52,253

Keywords: anne of all trades truck, restoration project, 12v conversion, car restoration project, chevy advance design, 1953 chevy 3100, muscle car, car restoration, 1953 chevy 3100 pickup, 1953 chevy 3100 truck, 1953 chevy 3100 ignition switch, chevrolet advance design trucks, restoration project car, 6v to 12v conversion, generator to alternator conversion, generator to alternator conversion chevy, alternator, 6v to 12v conversion kit

Id: aKRVFMgRlyg

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 22 2019