i spent about 4 hours last night scouring neon forums but never found a definitive answer. i am doing the big 3 upgrade and know everything there is to know about it with one exception, battery to alternator.
the positive line from the battery goes to a plastic housing on the starter which then has 2 lines running from it, a small one to the solenoid and a larger one to the alternator. the battery to starter line appears to be an 8 or 10 gauge wire, with the same running from starter to alt. the line to the solenoid is much smaller, but there is no need to upgrade that wire. every post i read about people trying to get at that plastic housing thing resulted in it getting broken so i really hate to mess with that.
my question is this: if you have ALREADY done a big 3 upgrade, including positive side, what did you do for this connection? did you replace the line from battery to starter, and then starter to alt? if so, how did you get it to go into that housing thing? (i am assuming that anyone who has done this had used a minimum of 4 gauge wiring, which is quite a bit larger than the stock.) did you bypass it and just add another direct connection between the battery and the alt? if so, did you fuse it, and with what size fuse?
if anyone can give me real life experience with this issue it would be greatly appreciated. i was up until 1 am reading posts from as far back as 2003 and never found the answers i needed.
btw, if anyone is thinking about doing this, the how-to in the electrical section has a very detailed post about the ground side of this, but nothing on the positive side. it is a great place to start though.
big 3 / alternator question
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occasional demons
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If you don't want to mess with the starter connection, which is just basically a ring terminal with a slide terminal integrated; enclosed in a plastic housing, I would run the upgrade wire from the alternator to the battery leaving the alt/starter/battery circuit intact. Unless the engine has serious compression, the stock starter to battery wire should be adequate. Just my $0.02
Edit: the fuseable link/fuse could be used. It is more of a safeguard if the alternator shorts internally or the battery develops a shorted plate, or if by some bizare chance the alternator goes into kill charging mode, and makes some wicked amperage. The thing is, if you're upgrading to run more stuff, the "fuse" will need to be better than the total max amperage draw of the amps, etc. which may not protect the battery/alt. in the above mentioned situations. It all comes down to the tradeoff.
Edit: the fuseable link/fuse could be used. It is more of a safeguard if the alternator shorts internally or the battery develops a shorted plate, or if by some bizare chance the alternator goes into kill charging mode, and makes some wicked amperage. The thing is, if you're upgrading to run more stuff, the "fuse" will need to be better than the total max amperage draw of the amps, etc. which may not protect the battery/alt. in the above mentioned situations. It all comes down to the tradeoff.
Bill
2000 Neon MTX swap with '02 R/T PCM
1999 neon coupe 2.4 swap
Probably shouldn't listen to anything your penis says, that guy's a dick.
Too much time spent here is a sign of a bad case of Ownaneonvirus.Patience, of course, is a very powerful weapon, but sometimes I start to regret that it is not a firearm.
2000 Neon MTX swap with '02 R/T PCM
1999 neon coupe 2.4 swap
