Car-ma, Powerless

Hrm, monday freeride is totally rained out. Pick up a new battery from Sears. Expensive. Heavy. Noticeably heavier than the Exide Optima clone I replaced. Go home and fortunately the rains have stopped. Quickly take advantage of that and fix the bad alternator wire. The soldering is a little iffy. The heavy gauge wire is too big even for the butane iron on full blast. Reinstall the alternator and belt. Install new battery and replace bad clamps. Car starts no problem. Yay! Then I go to measure voltage. It’s only running 12 volts, and when I stop engine, voltage goes up. Looks like alternator is not outputing anything. I then watch the dash, the charge light does not come on when I switch ignition on. This indicates that there is no power getting to the alternator to initially start it functioning. Damn. After checking fuses, I quit for the night. I’ll have to recheck the alternator plug, and also here’s one I didn’t think about until reading up on alternators on the net. If the bulb is burnt out, the alternator won’t work.