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Floating a grounded alternator would be tough and dangerous. You'd have to make an insulated mount and an insulated belt tension bar and then NEVER drop a wrench between the engine, loader, or frame and the alternator case. That wrench would get full battery 2 kilo amps short (limited by the negative charging wire) to weld and melt. Not a safe operation. You could connect lights and accessories from the middle of the 24 volt battery to ground, but that would guarantee the low battery not being charged like the high battery. Deadly on that low battery from undercharge, and hard on the high battery from overcharge You could look for a little Leece-Neville with both sides floating. I have one here, 105 amps, twice as big as a Delco 10SI, maybe larger with both + and - terminals from the rectifier insulated. There might have even been a Delco made with both rectifiers floating. Or maybe yours could be made that way by a good automotive electric shop that could find the parts for the negative side of the rectifier from a Delco made for positive ground, or by installing reversed polarity diodes in a positive rectifier block and using that for the negative rectifier block with the appropriate insulators. You could hang a separate 12 volt alternator and use it to run the lights on a separate or the lower 12 volt battery. The original 24 volt generator was only good for 10 amps. Which made it charge from a hard start most all day to catch up. It was not designed for chore tractor use a half hour each start. I don't know what they were thinking. Or you could regulate that 24 volt alternator down to 12 volts, hook the batteries in parallel and go to a 12 volt starter the way the late 3020 and 4020 as well as all the later JD tractors did. JD sells a kit for that, about $600. I saw one advertised on epay last week I think. Or you could find surplus aircraft headlights and indicator lamps and run the accessories on 24 volts. There are 24 counterparts for nearly all the lamps, not commonly stocked at your corner tractor parts store though. Probably only the fuel gauge needs 12 volts, so you could set up a 12 volt regulator supplied by 24 volts for that. I don't know the fuel gauge current, but its probably within the capabilities of a LM320K12 or bigger integrated circuit regulator. Gerald J.
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