Here's another question for both lists. And Lord Lucas IS helping
me....Helping me need a reservation at the funny farm!
I installed an overdrive specific speedometer in the Alpine today. This
one pretty acurately reads the speed. My previous speedo, with my new
3:89 differential and overdrive, showed me going 105 MPH at 3500 RPM. I
only wish it were true (it was actually around 70 MPH at 3500). Now to
the Tiger/Alpine cross referencing....
The speedo installed, out I went for a test drive and I noticed, trying
out all the gadgets, my heater blower wasn't working, plus the water and
fuel guages both pegged out to the right. Sure enough, on checking, I
had pulled out one of the wires to the voltage regulator in doing the
speedo install. Plugged that back in. The fan motor worked for 3-4
seconds, then stopped. Guages read OK for a minute or so, then pegged
out again. As per the shop manual, I checked voltage from the regulator
to ground. When I first checked it, it read about 13 volts (the book
calls for 10), so I figured I had somehow messed the regulator up in
installing the speedo. I bought a new regulator from a parts store. When
I went to install the new one, I unscrewed the attatching screw to the
old one. Just for the heck of it, I tried the heater blower again, and
it worked + the guages read correctly. This was with the old regulator
un-grounded! I checked voltage and now it read the correct 10 volts. I
screwed the old regulator back in and then the same problems came up
again. I unscewed it, things worked!
Then, the mechanical genius that I am, I just used electrical tape the
hold the regulator in place. In re-installing my speedo, I bumped
something under the dash a couple of times which was accompanied by very
pretty sparks flying everywhere! A couple of bouts of this blew one of
the 35 amp fuses. I replaced the fuse, check that all was working OK (it
was), and re-installed the speedo. Guess what? Now the fan and the two
guages again are inoperable.
Do those regulators work intermittently when going into a failure mode?
Seems like if I shook the wires going into it, on occasion the thing
functioned.
Anyway, tommorow I'll try installing the new voltage regulator which I'm
a little concerned about as it does not have the attatching post on it
to screw under the dash. Mechanic's wire? Or maybe just run a ground
wire from it?
Has anyone else had any of these fun Lucas experiences with this?
Uh, oh. the SUNI trip is only 4 days away!
Steve Sage
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