[george kujanski]

Yes, it does, but Arby's indicated that there were no high loads at idle, If I remember correctly.

The idiot lite should go out if the alt is charging at all, and here's the reason: on the ext reg designs, key on, engine stopped, the idiot lite current goes thru the lite (bulb goes on) to the reg, goes thru the reg to the alt field, completing the circuit, providing a magnetic field in the rotor, and keeping the lite on.

Once the engine runs and the alt starts to produce output voltage, the "R" alt terminal goes to the reg term 2, pulling in the idiot lite relay inside the reg. The idiot lite relay then disconnects the idiot lite from the alt field and instead connects battery voltage from reg term 3 to the voltage sensing relay and the brown wire (idiot lite). Since the idiot lite now has ignition circuit voltage on one side of the bulb and battery voltage from the reg on the other side, there is no net voltage on the bulb and the bulb goes off. The alt now gets field voltage from the battery thru the moving contacts on the voltage sensing relay.

SO, since Arby's alt is providing output voltage, and the "R" circuit is good, the idiot lite relay SHOULD have bulb off.

Q for Arby's: do you know if this is a original-type reg, i.e mechanical relays, or a newer replacement type, i.e. solid state?

Also, try this: see if you can remove the brown wire from the reg connector, and instead use a jumper to connect it to the reg or use 4 jumpers so you can connect/disconnect the brown.

With the engine running and output at 14V hopefully, you said the idiot lite is on. Remove the brown wire connection and see if the lite goes off. I suspect it will. Check the alt output voltage with the brown wire disconnected. I suspect the alt voltage will drop to battery voltage.

George