This is a message to poo poo all of you who believe that Lucas "the
prince of darkness" designed built and sold bad or soon to become bad
products during the sixties.
I purchased my car about 6 years ago while I was in need of a car to drive
while I rebuilt the engine in my driver car. The car ran well, but the
generator points were broken, so I replaced the generator with a $30
rebuild.
The generator is the only electrical part that I have ever purchaced for the
Alpine.
During my restoration process I have had every electrical part off the car,
the wiring harness out of the car, all guages switches etcetera. The wiring
harness had been needlessly modified "prablably for some funky 8 track tape
system" but the harness was intact and not burnt anywhere at all "amazing?".
The wiring was restored very similar to the factory schematic.
The flasher unit was an original lucas unit with a manufacture date of 10-61
and still works like a champ.
The wiper box has never given me any grief at all and is also original.
The hooter horns are original and sound very good "after an occasional
tweak".
All lucas switches are in good shape although the plastic on the switches
have all deteriorated. I will have to replace the switches to make the
interior look primo.
All Jeager gauges work flawlessly as well as an added Smiths electronic
tach.
The tank sender still worked up until the tank was replaced by a fuel cell,
and the original temperature sender from a late series V alpine engine
works just fine with my series II temp gauge.
The brake switch still has the original factory paint on it and still works
fine too.
My car originally had an overdrive, so the car still had all the wiring and
lucas OD relay. The relay still worked, so I left it where it was and used
the relay for a horn relay
and decreased the current through the horn switch wire. Cool huh?
One of the headlamps is not a lucas, but the one that is is slightly
brighter than the one that is not. Perhaps someday I'll buy another lucas
headlamp in order to make the lighting more consistant.
Ok I've replaced all the running lights with sylvania lights, but honest I
could'nt find any one who sold Prince of darkness brand bulbs. Its probably
just as well as the bulbs are probably too bright any way and are
undoubtedly the only lucas parts that have ever been repaced on the car.
I've heard all sorts of horror strories about smoke fire and brimstone
under the dashes of these english cars and I have a theory why some cars
have problems and others do not.
It's really quite simple. Cars whose wiring smokes and bursts into flames
have had their bateries filled with too muck smoke to begin with and thus
lucas is exhonerated of all wrongdoing whatsoever.
Jarrid Gross
SII EFI.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 09:25:59 CDT