Good evening all,

I posted this issue on an Olds Facebook site and I got some decent feedback but we didn't really get to the bottom of it. I thought I'd post this on here to see if anyone has any thoughts?

My 66' Toronado seems to have a bit of a wiring peculiarity and it doesn't seem to be consistent with other 1st gen Toronados that I've seen. If you look at the wiring diagram for the Toro in the CSM, it shows 4 wires going to the voltage regulator, however, on mine there is an extra 5th (black) wire crimped to the same pin as the brown wire from the ignition for the field excitation voltage at the alternator. That extra black wire is not depicted on the CSM wiring diagram. I've seen photos of some Toronados that have that 5th wire and I've seen others that only have 4. Strange.

Anyway, I would like to know the purpose of this extra wire. The only direction I have been able to find is in the 66' CSM Non-Toro section figure 12-4 and an extra wire is shown going to the GEN dummy light. In the case of the Toronado, it has an ammeter rather than a GEN light so this has me wondering what is going on. Is it part of the ammeter system? Is it just an extra wire from the factory that's not used?

Now, I had some wiring damaged in a small engine fire from a few years ago and while I was in there repairing it I had removed the original harness electrical tape and I found that the black wire stopped just as the wiring harness turns to go through the firewall. Now it's possible that the wire was damaged in the fire and was clipped off but it seemed that it was neatly clipped off under the original electrical tape like it came that way from the factory. It's really hard to say, but I did not see the other part of the wire if it was indeed cut off by the post fire repair.

At the same time, my ammeter isn't working currently so I may have multiple issues. In any case, it's possible that the wire I'm talking about goes to one side of my ammeter and if that is indeed the case, the CSM wiring diagram is wrong. If anyone can shine some light on this I would be very grateful!

See my attached photos.

Extra black wire highlighted. Fire damage seemed to expose some yellow underneath the black insulation.



Only 4 wires shown in CSM wiring diagram - voltage regulator section





Could it be the other side of this wire at the Ammeter?




CSM doesn't even show the ammeter in the Toro section. Very strange.