What the heck is this?

quote:

Question is, what is it, what does it do, and do I need to put it back?

It is a shunt resistor for your alternator indicator light, and YES, you need to put it back.

For proper charging there needs to be current passing through the indicator light (found in your speedo unit) marked "GEN" (Yea, it should be marked "ALT", but what the heck. It's Italian).

Should the filament of the bulb burn out, the circuit would become open and charging would cease. In the case of our Panteras, the resistor is provided to provide a back-up path for the current.

Remove the bulb wiring spade connectors, remove the bulb socket, and re-solder the resistor as in this photo.

Solder leads close to socket to retain enough room for the spade connectors to slide on.

Larry

Thanks Larry,

But one of the wire leads from the resistor has broken off. Can I use any resistor with the same ohm and wattage rating? I am asuming that finding one of these exact resistors is going to be darn near impossible!
Doug M

Doug,

IIRC from my high school electronics class, you can use a higher wattage resistor, but do not want to use a lower rated one.

Ohm value, in this case 15, is what determines the resistance to the current. I'd try to stay close to this value.

And I assume (yea, I know....makes an...) the vendors would stock a replacement?

Two of these from Radio Shack, wired in series (end to end in a row, not side by side) would give you 16 ohms at 20 watts.

http://www.radioshack.com/prod...sp?productId=2062288

Or eBay has these exact matches:

http://tinyurl.com/l48ocs

http://tinyurl.com/l5mnxq
Larry

Simple enough !
Thanks again
Doug M