I replaced my Alpine's Lucas alternator with another brand from a more
modern car. It eliminated all sorts of external boxes. The replacement
often required a blip of the throttle to get it charging. I finally went
and bought the owners manual for the car the alternator came from, traced
the wiring and figured out what was wrong. The wire for the ignition light
actually served a very important role. It allowed the electricity to flow
through the light to the alternator to "charge" the coils in the
alternator, and turning on the light in the process. Once the coils were
charged, the electricity would flow back to the light and turn it off. So,
actually the resistance of the bulb is very important. In fact, the modern
car's wiring diagram shows a small resistor in parallel with the light. I
believe, though am not certain, that the resistor is there to serve as back
up in case the bulb blows (I think that with two resistors in parallel, the
electricity will always flow through the lower resistance, so the resistor
just sits there waiting for its turn).
I wonder if that has something to do with this issue. The Alpine ignition
light did not serve any functional purpose. In fact, there was an entirely
separate "ignition light simulator" that would cause the light to go on and
off.
>> I really think this winding is for some other purpose as in the
>>owners manual for this car, they list the replacement bulb as a 12V,
2.4W.
>>Could this be for some type of induction to light the bulb only when
curent
>>is flowing through the wire?
>>Regards,Bob
>At 07:17 AM 10/21/1998 -0700, Roland Dudley wrote:
>
> This light wire is just a dropping resistor so that a low voltage bulb
(2.8v
> or so) can be used....you can replace the little wire with a fixed
resistor or
> just use a 12 v bulb. There must have been a reason why they did
this...but
> it escapes me. These units are used on MG TC's/TD's and are available
from
> Moss at a pretty high price....
>>The 2.8V bulb lobby?
>
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