At 07:21 AM 8/27/00 +0700, Gavin Broad wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Just got the Mutt back from a 200 mile round-trip to the Eastern Seaboard -
>knackered! 7 hours driving.
>
>Charge gauge stayed at normal charging throughout the journey until we hit
>the outer Bangkok area when it went to almost nowt and slowly back to
>normal, then down again. By this time the afternoon rains had set it and
>we had the headlights on but the lights showed no signs of dimming. ???
>
>Sailed through 5 police road blocks - they thought that we were visiting
>military - well, who was I to say otherwise? We even got saluted at one of
>them!
I'd double check the belts, or even replace them if they look the slightest
bit 'polished'. I've not found too many instances of belt slip on a
reasonably tight multi-belt system, but you'll save yourself a bunch
of work by starting small and working up. Check for high-resistance
connections starting at the battery terminals, then work forwards. Check
your grounds between all points as well - preferably with a multimeter if
you have one with a good grasp of resistance.
Failing that, on the early M-series charging systems I've had occasion to
fix, I find the early mechanical regulators don't seem to age that well, and
usually replace troublesome ones out-of-hand with their later solid-state
counterparts, or chuck the whole system on work-for-a-living vehicles
in favour of the later 60 amp alternator and be done with it (requires
a pulley change in some instances, and a bit of rewiring in all.)
If the regulator isn't at fault, I've had a few generators that were down
to their last millimetre on the brushes, which may well be what you're
experiencing. Never had any luck locating a source for the brushes,
but I do have the part number around somewhere if you need it.
Andy Hill
MVPA #9211
Vancouver, B.C.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Sep 02 2000 - 09:32:36 PDT