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I just picked up a CS144(and some other goodies) from the junkyard. CS144 is from a 94 Cadillac Deville. The pigtail that comes out of the alternator has an S, and an L terminal. I believe the S terminal should just loop to the output terminal of the alternator. For the L terminal I have heard different ideas. Some say you should wire in a 100 ohm resistor and others say its fine without the resistor. How should I wire the L terminal on the alternator? I have a 1976 Wagoneer with the yellow ammeter wire deleted and the alternator wired straight to the battery with 6 gauge cable.

after some more research i came to the conclusion L needs a resistor. I purchased this adapter which has a resistor in it. This adapter is commonly used for a SI to CS conversion

Also this pulley was not easy to get off had to heat it with a torch and pound it many times with a sledge hammer.

Glad you found the adapter you needed. Hopefully you didn't damage the bearings getting the pully off.

If I remember correctly, the trick to overcoming the tapered collar when removing the alternator pulley is turning the pulley and fan opposite directions when putting pressure on the socket.

I installed the alternator today. The pulley lines up good and it runs smooth. Unfortunately, i am not getting any charge from the alternator. Battery stays at 12.4v even when you rev the engine. I think the alternator is bad. The way i wired it (temporary) was by using the green field cable off my external voltage regulator and connecting that to the L on the harness. And for the S on the harness i jumped that to the batt+ on the back of the alternator. I thought maybe the alternator wasnt grounding to the engine but thats not the case. Im gonna pull the alternator and have it tested.

Round 2: Went back to the junkyard, returned the bad alternator and pulled this one out of a 91 Cadillac Seville. Looks like it was just remanufactured. Its only a 120A but you cant beat it for $30. Everything is working good its producing 14.5 volts at idle. Just need new belts, right now the adjuster is maxed out and the belts are flopping.

Looks good!

Doesnt Jeep have a Resistive wire to excite the alternator? If so, why would you need to add the resistor? I run the GM style single wire alternators.

A '76 with a V8 would have had the Motorcraft alternator originally. These use an external mechanical (!) regulator with the resistor internal to the regulator, as I recall.

IIRC '74 and prior Jeeps used the (less than great) Motorola alternators and solid-state regulators. The sixes got the Delco in '75 with the V8s keeping the Motorola, and the V8s got the Motorcraft for '76 and 77. The V8s finally got the Delco 10SI in 1978, again IIRC.

Also, 100 ohms is way more than the resistance wire that comes in a Jeep with a 10SI. 10 ohms IIRC. Maybe the CS144 can have more resistance, or needs more to prevent back-feeding the later computerized cars.

No experience with the CS144, but the SI types have a sense wire and an excite wire, aside from the battery connection, as you describe in your first post. The sense wire on Jeeps loops back to the battery connection. The excite wire 'bootstraps' the alternator by providing a tiny current to the field at startup. After that, the alternator self-generates without any external current.

I probably could have used the exciter wire coming out of the external voltage regulator unit but then I would be depending on two voltage regulators working and I would have an extra box on the fender. I removed the external voltage regulator and I just ran an extra wire from my ignition relay that I made previously. The pigtail has a 200 Ohm resistor by the way. I guess thats what the CS144 likes.