Saturday, January 02, 2010

Trials and tribulations

I took MOE out to Leicestershire before Christmas, and a horrible smell started to waft through the car, and no it wasn't me! I thought it was something dripping on the exhaust, but having has a triumph on the road since 1973 I have smelt engine and gearbox oil on the exhaust before (many, many times lol).

So I thought as I didn't readily recognise the odour it must be power steering fluid, a quick inspection did'nt show anything obvious so I continued to drive. As I got to the M6 the smell increased and then the ignition light came on, a quick check saw that the fan belt was ok, and as I have a huge battery on her I decided that I would make Birmingham, which I did without a problem.

At home quick check of the dynamo, with a circuit tester between the contacts on the back I revved it up and the lamp should have glowed, it didn't so a new dynamo was needed.

A local member gave me a reconned C40 dynamo that he had in stock and wasn't ever going to need again and over the holiday I bought on ebay a RB340 Control box. Now if you replace a faulty dynamo, I would always recommend that the control box is changed as 9 times out of 10 it's a faulty control box that causes the dynamo to fail. I changed the control box Thanks to Mick Papworth for telling me where it was! Then I went to fit the dynamo only to find that although it looked the right one it was about an inch shorter, a quick phone call to the local supplier found a C40L i then left a few days before I got around to it.

I went to open my garage door to change dynamo, and it was frozen shut, two days later it was still frozen so today I attacked it with a paint stripping heater gun and eventually a bolster chisel that did the job! Changed the dynamo and you have to make sure that is the right polarity, you take a lead from the battery and strike one of the terminals at the rear of the dynamo three times, the little one (field) for negative earth cars and the larger one form positive earth cars.

Car fixed total cost £103 why didn't I fit an alternator nah, new fangled things lol!

Photos to follow when I can work out how to use my new camera.

Oh yes one point make sure your get the correct control box as well as the correct dynamo for your car I got the wrong one first time around!