nothin but the horn works

[boyle05]

no, the bulb was causing lights and signals to malfunction. there was a wire open between the relay and the alternator causing it not to start. i still have a ghost - when you turn the headlights on the oil pressure and fuel gauges go dead. turn headlights back off and gauges return to normal. the temp. and amp. gauges have been questionable since we had the truck. do you think it messed up the regulator on the back of the inst. cluster, we replaced the reg. out by the radiator, what is the little resistor mounted below it for? could that have popped? runs and drives fine other wise now, just hoping to pin this issue down and that nothing else happens. thanks

[Dragon]

Your ghost is a resistive connection not letting enough current to the gauges. If the current available to the dash drops to 3 amps or less the dash gauges turn off. The IVR cannot cycle with the draw the gauges wants so it does not provide voltage. A resistor is on the bottom of the regulator. The thing on the wire near the regulator is a capacitor i.e. noise filter.
Clean the battery terminals and the wires on the solenoid B+ terminal. that terminals feeds the rest of the vehicle.

Our factory amp gauge is a joke. It does not really measure current as much as it shows which way the current is flowing around the battery and solenoid area. Negative means draining from the battery and positive means charging from the alternator.

No wire from the alternator would keep it from starting. The B+ wire feeds the solenoid B+ terminal, That wire also feeds the ignition switch Yellow. In start on the switch you send voltage up to the S terminal on the solenoid which cause Starter and the I terminal (ignition bypass for start) to be connected to the B+ terminal and the truck starts. You can disconnect every wire on the truck and those wires will cause it to crank and start. Once the truck lights and the starter drops out then the Ignition wire needs to be there.

That is all my race cars had one them plus the fuel pump switches. Push to start Switch to run and switch to fuel. That is all it takes.

There is grounds behind the dash they have to be good for the dash and other items to work properly. The 2 or 3rd thing I do when I buy an old F Series is chase the B+ and all the ground wires to clean them up and make sure the truck works.

[boyle05]

found an open spot in the circuit board behind dash that was causing short. when the headlights were turned on the left turn signal indicator in the dash lit. i also found a ground that was not open but was not making good contact - out at the turn signal, where it bolts the the panel between bumper and grill. was going to patch the inst. panel but i picked up a whole new cluster at pull a part for $28. hopefully this will be the last ghost. thanks for all the help.

[Dragon]

No Problem