Hello again,
strange electrical happenings discovered while sworking on gas leaks. I
topped up the batter (not overfilling) and while revving the motor trying to
find a leak/overflow in the fuel line or carbs, teh battery overlowed! IT
was bubbling electrolyte out of the cells. I put a voltmeter on the
terminals and revved it up, and the voltage jumped to 16 V. Ahha, I think,
bad voltage regulator. However, I could not repeat the reading and all
subsequent readings at t eh battery were 13.5-14 V.
Undaunted, I set up the voltage regulator test circuit described in teh
Bentley's manual. Again, as I first revved the motor, the voltage from the
alternator surge to 16+ V, and then quickly settled down to 14.1 when running
at 2500 rpm.
First question: can voltage regulators fail intermitently?
Additional symptoms: The wipers run slowly when the engine is idling,a nd
speed up when rpms increase. Also, the headlights dim slightly when the
cooling fan is switched on. Something seems odd. Last bit of info, I
recently pulled and cleaned and tightened the grounding strap and have since
added a second grounding strap running from the cylinder head to the negative
terminal.
Any further suggestions will, as always, be appreciated.
BTW, its a 1980 spitifre. sorry.
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