1979-1993 & 94 Conv [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
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Another Story to amuse those of you that have been there and done that. So RED, my 1987 900T vert has been running strong. Upgraded to a water/oil turbo because I like the way they last, and I don't want to have to let it cool down before I shut down (This was the *only* non water turbo in my fleet and don't want to have to think that hard...), a couple of months later found a cracking air coupling at the turbo and fixed that. And that put the Turbo back in Turbo! Then went further and put in a Red box. Woo Hoo! Capital "T" in Turbo. I even checked out the Voltage Regulator brush setup and swapped them out. Brushes were worn, not to the end, but enough I did it "just because".
and all is good... until last week. It was getting slower and slower cranking on a startup. Was at Walter Wongs working on R1 and the battery said no mas. Walter loaned me a battery and the next day I took the battery back to Costco, it was only 18 months old. Got a full dollar refund! Compared what I had with what was available and decided on the slightly wider (but still fit between the hold down J bolts) battery that was 650 CCA vs the others 550 CCA. Woo Hoo! fast cranking and starts are back... for awhile...
Last night, notice I said "night", while on I-5 in the pitch black, the headlights started getting dim, then darker... and the engine was bucking and not happy. Then the headlights got bright and the engine happy. Back and forth on and on... I had to turn the headlights off just to keep the coil happy and made an off ramp and a 7-11 parking lot with lots of light.
The battery was nearly flat. A new damn battery! Days old! Ok, it must not be charging. Check the battery light in the dash. I know it had been illuminated (really I look at it) when starting but maybe it just blew. Looks ok. Put it in the brights indicator next door, and it *is* ok! But it doesn't light up in it's socket. I have just enough juice to light up the idiot lights. On the 1991 vert (BC) the ignitor wire was broken at the alternator. Check that! No... it's solid and plugged in. Can it be the VR brushes I put in?
30 minutes later I find that the end of the alternator ground strap (the one that wraps around under the alternator to a bolt you can't see) had broken off the round connector and I have a bare wire. It must have been bouncing off the engine and grounding, sometimes, but most always when I started it was grounded. So the lights worked, and the car would start - slowly, and when going down the road (mostly daytime) the ground was intermitant...
What to do... I stripped off about three inches of the insulation, backed off one of the 12 mm bots holding the oil filter adapter into the block, wrapped the wire around the bolt, tighten it back while making sure some of it stayed under the shoulder of the bolt.... got a jump, and woo hoo! Drove home.
Today I put a new heavy duty, braided strap in it's place. AND I added a couple of lengths of heavy gauge stranded insulated wire AND some electrical wire nuts to my trunk kit. During the drive home I was thinking of other ways I could have done the temporay fix and realized that the wire nuts and looping bare wire around a ground point, and then forcing the three wires into a wire nut and tightening, would have been a much easier and quicker fix. So all of my cars now have that added to their trunk kits.
Experience varies directly with equipment ruined or time wasted or being broken down somewhere...
Years ago the brushes in the "generator" on my Porsche 912 wore, on a 300 mile from NWC China Lake to YPG, at night, wore to the point that I was running on battery. It's disconcerting when you turn on the driving lights and the engine stops... So after I figued out, with a flashlight on a dark Arizona highway, the problem I "shimmed" the brushes with foil gum wrapper (doublemint!) folded to fit between the spring and the brush to force the last couple of mm of brush material to get me to my destination. Yep, serious road side engineering!
And then there was the time my Chevy Luv pickup fan belt departed normal flight. and I found out that the fuel pump ran on the battery to start the engine, but it then switched over to the charging circuit to run... oops! It's AMAZING what you can do with industrial strength three foot long military spec zip ties... but that's another story...
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