D17 Voltage Regulator Wiring

I have a quick question I am hoping someone can help me with. I purchased a new voltage regulator for my D17 IV, 12V, Positive Ground.  The previous owner had it wired up improperly to negative ground, so I am going to go through the entire wiring, and make sure everything is correct.

Here's my problem.  In the factory manual, the diagram for the VR show the three outputs as B - A - F from left to right.  The manual shows the leftmost post going to the ammeter with an orange wire, the middle to Armature with a black, and rightmost to Field with a neutral color wire.

The replacement regulator has the three terminals labeled as  L - Batt - F.

It also has stamped on the cover that it can be used with Pos or Neg ground.

So it seems the B - A posts in the factory wiring diagram are in opposite order from the L - Batt posts on the new regulator? 

The rightmost post seems obvious, since it is labeled F, and is connected through a resistor under the regulator to a ground strap.

If I take the cover off the regulator, is there anything in the wiring that would tell me unambiguously which post is which? 

thanks.

I am looking at the I&T manual, and it has different wiring diagrams for the different series tractors.  Which Series do you have and is it gas or diesel?

Doesn't matter what the sequence is. Different mfrs have different designs. There should be a GEN terminal on that regulator if its for a Generator system. Turn the regulator upside down and see if there's a terminal with "G" or "GEN". It could be a 4 terminal replacement VR. The Gen terminal will run to the "A" (Armature) post of the Generator. The BAT terminal runs to the Ammeter, and the "F" terminal will run to the "F" post on the Generator. The "L" (Load) terminal is for accessories as Brian mentioned. On the "D" series, AC usually used the Load terminal for the light switch. On the D17 Series IV, power was pulled off the Ignition side of the Ign. switch to power up the lighting circuit. HTH
Steve@B&B

In the I&T book the orange wire goes to the ammeter, the black wire goes to the 'A' side of the generator and the natural(possibly white) goes to the 'F' side of the generator.  Not sure if this helps.

If it has a "L" terminal it should have a 4th terminal on the oppsite side or underneath.

Steve, Chambers and everyone who has been helping me,

I feel like a total idiot.  You guys are right!  I don't know how I could be so stupid.  The new regulator does have 4 terminals.  The old one on the tractor had the three terminals across the bottom, and a fourth on top that wasn't used on my tractor, labelled Ground.  My new one had three on the bottom - and a top fourth one, that I assumed (as in. making an Ass out of U and Me), was ground.  But it wasn't - it was the missing Gen terminal.  There was no Ground on the new VR, with it having the mysterious L terminal instead. 

That was the good news.  I spent much of the day re-wiring everything back to the factory diagram.  It was a bit of a mess from the previous owners.  Some wires were cut, and some used the wrong colors, etc.  Anyway, wire by wire I got everything back to factory.  I also polarized the generator when done by briefly touched the Gen and Batt terminals on the regulator, which produced a light spark. 

However, upon starting, I am still getting no charging.  

After being dense on the VR, I am now wondering if perhaps the ammeter itself might be defective?  If not, then I will pull the generator, and send it out to a shop for a rebuild.  Is there an easy way to test the generator output?

One thing, is the old battery was being run on neg ground for who knows how long, without any wiring changes, so maybe I should epect the generator to be toast? 

Thanks again you guys.  

Brian,

Thanks for the tip.  I'll give it  a try.