Charge warning light remains on

Accompanied by the sound of a chisel on slate Richard, managed to produce the following words of wisdom

It'll be the alternator. If the 3.9 is an SE and the 3.5 isn't then the alternator will work but you should really put the more manly one on. If it's the other way round, no worries :)

Thanks Pete.

Both are SE spec.

Out into the - inevitably in situations such as this - gathering gloom and falling temperatures I go ;-)

Richard

Check the connections off the back of the alternator. Sounds like a dirty/loose one.

Hi Dougal

Duly swopped!

No more red lights with engine off. I'm not sure if it was clear from my orginal post that the warning light only illuminated with the engine off.

And rev counter now works.

But, judging from how tight everything was, it _probably_ wasn't a loose connector (I hope).

I'll get it checked anyway.

Ta

Richard

I'm pretty sure you'll have sorted it. I had the exact same thing happen to me about 10 years ago. On Boxing night, miles from home...

Last time an alternator failed I was on my way to my cousin's funeral :-(

As it happens, it is the very same one that I have removed from the 3.5 RRC to the 3.9 RRC today.

Richard

On or around Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:26:08 +0000, Richard enlightened us thusly:

chances are it'll be a regulator fault. depending on where you are, you may find someone who can fix it, e.g. by replacing the regulator.

Last time I had an alternator fail it set light to the car and burnt out the engine bay ;(

Wow 8-(

On or around Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:42:57 +0000, Richard enlightened us thusly:

I had an alternator go short-circuit and start to incinerate the wiring. Luckily, I had the motor in the yard with the bonnet up at the time and was thus able to disconnect the battery pronto, but it had the potential to go on fire. The output cable of the alternator is usually pretty fat, and takes a lot of melting.

Dropped it into Curd Brothers, Tunbridge Wells on Tuesday, picked it up Wednesday lunchtime with new diode pack and pair of bearings. £47.50. Load tested as giving 70A @13.5V

Interesting to note that with the alternator from my 1989 3.5 RRC, the O/S heated door mirror now works. Neither heated door mirror has worked on the current (3.9) RR in the year that I have owned it - I swopped both mirrors from the 3.5 RR because I wanted the convex mirrors. The HRW did, and still does, work.

Richard