 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
As much as it pains me to do anything that raises the centre of gravity, I have moved my new battery up and away from the exhaust manifold. They just get so hot in the old position and hopefully this will prolong the life a bit longer.
I went out for a drive and towards the end of it, the battery light was coming on on the Digidash2, especially with the fan switched on. Sure enough, when I got home the voltage measured on the battery was 12.1V and with the fan on, dropped just below 12.0V. Something isn't right and the battery is clearly not getting charged, despite the new alternator.
Put the battery on charge over night.
Measured the fully charged battery voltage this morning and it was 13.4V. Went out for another run and I could see the battery voltage on the Digidash2 slowly falling down towards 12V. My guess is the car is running on battery alone and the charging circuit is not working. The car will do about 10 miles on battery alone before the battery voltage drops below 12V.
I pulled the plug from the rectifier/regulator and measured the output voltage on the two pins. It was zero :-( It looks like the regulator/rectifier is dead but, I'm going to do some more testing tomorrow.
The regulator circuit looks something like this, so it is quite easy to perform some basic tests.
I removed the rectifier/regulator unit to test it out more thoroughly. This YouTube video 
shows you how to do a couple of basic tests using a multimeter with a diode test function.
It did the forward bias test which involves connecting the meter negative lead to the positive on regulator and the positive lead on each of the 3 phases. The voltage drops were 0.73, 0.73 and 0.72V. This implies the rectifier is working as expected. I then did the negative bias test which involves connecting the meter positive lead to positive on the rectifier and then connecting the meter negative lead to all three phases. As expected they all showed open circuit. This is leading me to thnk that the rectifier/regulator is working as expected.
The next test I did was to check both the ac and dc voltages across the stator coils when the engine was idling and also at 6000rpm. In all cases it was basically zero. This implies the the magnet assembly is simply not rotating to generate any voltage or the coils are no longer connected to the stator cable :-(
My next job is to visually check the stator and rotating magnet assembly. This mean taking the engine out again :-( I think I've got enough room to get the cover off with the engine in place, so I'm going to try this first.
When replacing the stator and removing the rotating magnet assembly, it is always best to replace the magneto fixing bolt. The part number is 90105105A6. This is part [6] as shown here .
It's time to start looking at new tyres again. The Yokohama A048R's are no longer road legal in the UK, so I'm planning to fit Toyo Proxes R888R tyres next.
The other tyres I'm considering are the Avon ZZR but these only come in a 185/55 R13 size. This means a diameter of 533mm, a sidewall of 102mm and a circumference of 1676mm. Compared to my current 185/60 R13 size (diameter of 551mm, a sidewall of 112mm and a circumference of 1735mm), this means the car will sit 9mm lower to the ground, which is quite a lot when you only have 75mm of ground clearance to start with! It also means that I'll need to recalibrate the speedo (easily done) and the gearing will be 3.5% lower. This is good for acceleration :-) The lower profile and sidewall height will also make a visible difference.
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
