I noted a long time ago that my 8 amp B&C Specialty Products SD-8 standby alternator wasn’t working. But, every time I wen to the hangar, I’ve either had more important snags to chase, or the weather was good and I went flying. This afternoon, the wind was howling straight across the runway, and I wasn’t too motivated at work, so I went to the hangar to finally attack this snag.

First, I compared the wiring diagram in the B&C installation drawings against my wiring diagram - they matched perfectly. Then I crawled under the instrument panel with a voltmeter to check my wiring. I found that there was no power at the voltage regulator. Tracing the wiring, I found that for some stupid reason I hadn’t fully finished installing all the wiring for the alternator control. I had not installed the wire that went between the control relay and the noise filter capacitor.

Now that I know what the problem is, I need to find the best way to run a 12 AWG wire from the control relay, behind the right side of the instrument panel, and the capacitor way over on the left side, on the front of the landing gear box. I’ll attack this fix in the near future, once I acquire anther 12 AWG ring terminal - the lack of one of these is perhaps why I never finished the job in the first place.