Can I retain my 24V gauges?

[Mudduk1333]

Might be too late...

I might be a little late on this post but, and I don't own a military truck but a small trick I learned the other day while wiring up a cummins power unit on a small mill with two batteries you can wire them in series and parallel and you will be able to get 24v and 12v your 24v alternator will be charging both batteries at the 24 volt level and you just pull your 12 volts off of one. so you wire the batteries like you in series for your 24v then just tie into the first battery for your 12v hopefully it makes sense and my picture up loaded

 

[Gunfreak25]

Now that I have my truck in hand I am able to see what has been done to it. All the original wiring is still in place and only a few cuts were made here and there, easily repaired, just have to plug a few connectors under the dash back in. My generator is still intact and was even hooked up to the 455 block, though it's not being used. They just used it to run the fan belt. I figure while it may be cheaper in the long run to just finish converting to 12V, It will much easier just to return the entire truck to 24V and just tap off one battery for my ignition. Since it starts up easily and we don't get freezing winters I am even going to run 24V through the 455 starter, and from the reading I have done this is not uncommon. I'd really like to add a converter later though so I can run as many things on 12V as I fancy.

 

[Jake0147]

This will certainly get the job done.

If you're going to "steal" power out of one of the batteries, you'll cook the other one if you don't pay attention to them. They will become biased.
Depending on how much is "stolen", probably not too big of a deal, but the "low" battery (the zero to twelve battery) will become discharged, and as it does so, the "high" battery (the twelve to twenty four battery) will overcharge until the generator sees it's combined voltage that it's looking for.
Keep an eye on both batteries to maintain a dead even charge, and correct as needed with a battery charger. May not be very often, may be all the time (you'll figure that out pretty quick), like I say it depends on how much the twelve volt load is.

Lots of folks (Especially fire departments and construction equipment, and similar services that use lots of auxillary lights and radio's) do this for their power, and never make the connection between the twelve volt stuff and the battery failures, because it is NOT the battery you stole from that gets damaged. It's the one you DIDN'T steal power from that takes it on the chin.