I brought a car back to life this weekend. It's not British itself,
but I bought it to be a tow car for a planned Bugeye Sprite vintage
racer, and I kept it to be a tow car for the E Production MGB, and
it's exhibiting the problems shown in the subject line so it can be
an honorary British car. Besides, it has a version of the engines
used in Lister-Corvettes, which are as British as it gets. More
to the point, since the problems I'm having with it are as British
as bangers and mash, I thought it would be appropriate to ask the
electrical system question on this list.
The oil leak I can see, it's in one of the valve covers, so I'll just
get a new set of gaskets and swap them in this week or weekend.
And I think I can fix the cooling system by conventional means;
it doesn't appear to be leaking, it's just that the car hasn't been
run in two years so I figure there's either crud in the line, or
the coolant has deteriorated, or both. And I work four blocks from
a known good radiator shop in Palo Alto, so I'm covered there if the
backflush and cooling system purge doesn't do the trick.
But about that electrical problem... Since the car had been sitting
for so long, I bought a new battery. Played games with the oil,
with some WD-40, and installed new plugs (mainly to see how badly
the old ones were fouled; good news is they were only covered with
fluffy black deposits, not oily grimy deposits, so I might be able
to adjust the carb a little leaner and fix that).
But having British cars has made me slightly dyslexic when it comes
to batteries, polarity, and ground/hot cables. I carefully looked
over the new battery (realizing after I returned home with the new
one that I'd forgotten to note the orientation of the old one before
removing it), repeated the Britcar-owner's mantra ("positive earth?
Negative earth? Damn") and quickly wired it up backwards. This led
to the most interesting sizzling noises when I tried to touch the
"ground" strap to the positive terminal after carefully wiring the
"hot" strap to the negative pole first. The arc of blue flame made me
rethink my actions, and after cursing British Phlegmsucking Leyland
for having confused me all those years ago with their "NEGATIVE
EARTH" messages (making me think that there was something weird
about cars with negative ground connections, no doubt), I wired the
battery up correctly.
Splashing some gas down the four throats of the carb after pouring
in the better part of three gallons of high-octane leaded racing
gas from the tank of the EP car, I crossed my fingers, put a fire
extinguisher on the seat, and inserted the key.
First crank... a big POP and it almost caught. Second crank, it went
and went and went and went but nothing happened. Mechanical fuel pumps
being what they are, I splashed another couple of tablespoons of gas
into the Q-jet and went back to start the car. An even bigger POP of
unburned gas in the exhaust, then it roared to life in a cloud of blue-
black soot and oil from the rust-prevented cylinders. We have ignition!
We have power! We have a tow vehicle!
I drove the car around for a while to get everything up to operating
temperature, to clean out the oil passages, and to get a handle on its
condition. That's where I noticed the coolant gauge needle resting
higher than I thought it probably should have for the cool day; we'll
do the conventional things soon (thermostat, new coolant, backflush
with a scale remover, etc.) Of course, it's possible that the cooling
system on this car simply doesn't work as well as the one on my MG...
But the ammeter was quite interesting. One of the nice things about
the Super Sport package is that it has gauges, while the base model
only has idiot lights. Of course, this being a (gasp) domestic auto,
the gauges have no calibrations; well, the oil pressure gauge has 0
and 60, the temperature gauge has C and H, the gas gauge has E and F
and the ammeter has D and C. On starting, the ammeter drops into
the D range, as is expected; and at idle, it sits at the marked
center of the gauge, where it's supposed to be.
But at any speed above idle, the system charges like Imelda Marcos at a
9 West factory discount sale. At freeway speeds, the needle is pegged
up at the C end of the range.
I'm afraid I've buggered the alternator when I temporarily wired the
system backwards. So I turn to the British Cars mailing list, home
of Joseph Lucas and his friends, to help me out.
Is it your experience that the problem could be caused by reversing
the polarity? Could I have blown the alternator diode? If so, would
that cause the system to charge at such an excessive rate? And what
will it do to my battery -- I'm guessing that it will at the very
least cause it to overheat, to evaporate its contents early (I had
that problem on an MG once many years ago) and might actually cause
it to explode?
|