charging system problems

[screamin86]

Alright my truck has a brand new 700ca batt new alt new starter and battery cables and I'm still having charing issues! On a cold start it will fire fine but if its been run at all and try to restart it does not have enough juice to crank to fire unless jumped. I've got one ground to the frame and one to the firewall but that's the one I have in question but at long as its running I have no issues but if I watch my volts gauge its barely reading 12-13 while driving and between 8-12 with it off! I've had 3 batts go bad in this thing in the past year all ended up having a dead cell.

[Irish_Alley]

Stop getting Walmart batterys. But I found my problem on my 94 to be poor ground. After replacing the although Thursday cause I turned on the AC the volts dropped to 12 as soon as I turned thetac off they pick back up to 14. My ground at my battery was loose so after tightening it down no more problems yet. But about you ground most of them go from battery - to frame and - to alternator bracket and - to cab

[screamin86]

Well the last 3 were valuecrap autozone ones I was able to upgrade to the duralast gold. I think my head to cab ground is the issue

[Grim 82]

78 Chevyrado has a pretty good lesson on grounding. I am thinking I would like to copycat his setup.
http://forum.73-87chevytrucks.com/smforum/index.php?topic=17464.msg139518#msg139518