Last night I figured out why the snake's ignition warning light was
staying on when the ignition switch was turned off. As mentioned in an
earlier note I had removed the ground cable from the battery and
connected up a charger. Yesterday evening I decided to look into the
lamp and discharge problem a bit further. It didn't take long. When I
touched the negative battery terminal with the ground cable, I could
hear a clicking sound coming from the other side of the engine
compartment. There are several "black boxes" on that side but the most
likely candidate was the alternator control box. I pulled its connector
off, and sure enough, that did the trick. No more clicking when the
battery was connected and the warning lamp behaved normally, i.e. it
was off when the key was in the OFF position and was on in both the ON
and ACCESSORIES position. Mike Gendimenico of the british-cars list
gets the cigar for guessing what the problem was. After disconnecting
the alternator I was able to replace the control box connector without
the lamp coming on or any clicking. It seems I have a fried alternator.
I started and ran the car briefly and it sounded okay, but I'm not
convinced that the running problem is gone for good. For one thing, the
problem has been around for several weeks and the alternator problem
hasn't. Since the car is generally only driven on the weekends, the
battery would have been dead long ago if it had. Of course a slowly
dying alternator could somehow have been causing the poor running
problem; or whatever was causing the poor running problem could have
also cause the alternator to die.
Another thing happened that seems to indicate a problem still exists. I
left the battery connected (and the alternator disconnected) overnight.
When I checked again this morning the ignition warning lamp still came
on, but there wasn't enough charge left in the battery to even activate
the starter solenoid. While the battery was obviously not fully charged
last night, it did turned the starter motor over with relative ease. At
the moment the ground cable is off again and the trickle charger is back
on.
While I was fiddling with things I discovered a small module mounted on
the fender wall just behind starter solenoid. I'm hoping this is the
ballast resistor. It seems to be about the right size; maybe 1 1/2"
long by 1/2-3/4" square and it has the name Autolite stamped on it along
with a part number. What makes me question that it is the ballast
resistor is the fact that it has three terminals to which four wires are
attached. Initially I thought it might be the horn relay, but the horns
are Lucas and I would expect the horn relay to be Lucas too since the
Lucas turn-signals lamps are controlled by a Lucas relay module. The
part number is a little hard to read but I think with a mirror and a
good light I can figure it out. In the mean time it looks like I'm in
the market for an Alternator and a controller. I'm thinking of trying a
solid state replacement for the latter.
Roland
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