Hey, Bill,
Again, I am immensely grateful for you spending all this time.
I am still slightly confused, so let me just check something: what is your photo 'rctfr1.JPG' a picture of? I thought it was a picture of the wires going into the reg/rec unit, but maybe not because it has
five wires going into it, but there are only four wires in the connector in the photo 'rctfr2.JPG'.
Next point - you wrote this:
"The only difference that I can see between our systems is that you have a black wire that should be earthed to the frame. Whereas on my wiring loom this is a white wire.
So, you should be able to trace the black wire to an earth point on the frame. The red wire should be connected to the positive terminal of the battery and your two white wires should end in a plastic connector to the two white/yellow wires coming from the charging coils on the alternator stator."
Right - that describes mine exactly. You see the picture I gave of the four wires ending in spade terminals? The white ones go to the charging coils, the black one to earth, and the red one to the battery positive. So we agree on that.
I think we are almost on the point of a breakthrough. Looking at your photo 'rctfr2.JPG', I can see one red wire and three white ones. Can you tell me which of the white ones is connected to earth? Top left, top right, or bottom right? Once I know that, I'll connect my black wire in that position, the red as shown in your photo, and the white wires in the remaining two slots.
Phew - almost there!
PS: I almost forgot - this morning I checked with a multimeter to see if the generator coil is shorting to earth, but it isn't. There is a very low resistance between the two white wires as I check back towards the generator, but an infinite resistance between those wires and earth. So it looks like the generator winding is probably OK.