In my short hobby career, I have made smoke, yes! This wasn't intentional. (lol) From the advice I got, I expected the voltage to be reduced to about 20V coming out of the 1N4004. Don't understand why that's not the case.That regulator is going to be dissipating nearly 7 watts and will cook itself to death in short order. Are you familiar with what happens to an IC when you let the magic smoke out?
Thanks for any help!