Well,
On wednesday I was driving back to the office form a work site. A 10 min trip in bad traffic. Half way back the tacho dropped to nothing, the speedo froze, the radio changed every channel to some alien weirdo station and when I used the indicators they started flashing really fast.
I just made it back to work and the old girl died. I couldn't get her restarted so left it and thought I'll check her a bit later to see if the gremlins had finished their meal.
About an hour later I went back to the car and it started and ran no problems. I blame the power junkies sucking extra power out of my little car but didn't think anymore of it, until.....
The trip home!!
Finished work and 5mins into a 15 min trip the same thing as earlier except this time she died really quick. I pusher her off the main road and into a side street but couldn't get her started again.
My father inlaw collected me on his way home and we stole the spare battery from the boat, went back and changed them over.
Happy times it started again. Quickest 15min drive home I could legally manage and grab the voltmeter.
I put it down to a dud battery or dud alternator. I put the battery on charge overnight and next day went to my local electrician.
Diagnosis was the battery was low but the alternator was not charging.
That night I pulled the alternator and the regulator brushes are almost worn away. My next challenge is to get the reg pack to refit to the car. nobody wants to sell me a reg pack. Eventually a mate from the BMW Drivers Club rang me and said he could get one from interstate for me and it would be in on Monday afternoon.
Now I'm just waiting for that.
I'll let you all know how it pans out when the reg gets here. It may be a while before I report back as I found the water pump bearing is about to destroy itself, so have ordered all the stuff to do the cooling system from Pelican parts. Hopefully it will be here in a week.
have a good weekend.
Cristian
Topic: Strange Alternator Power Fault (Read 2260 times)