Both headlight lamps blew today on my van. No big deal - off to the petrol station for two new ones.
Now which wanker managed to swap the working main beam lamps with the new lamps and leave the duff headlight lamps in place? And which wanker also threw away the working mainbeam lamps that he had removed before testing his headlights?
You've been spending too much time in London. I reckon there's something in the air that rots brains. (I'm possibly reading too much into my sample of one. But then again, look where politicians spend a lot of their time.)
In any event, to ask the bleeding obvious, after 2 bulbs going at once have you had a meter on with a passenger to check the alternator output while driving?
My multimeter is in London and I have at least another 2 months of living there to rot my brain.
The alternator output is going to be the first thing I check when I get back to digs. There was 200 miles between the bulbs blowing (190 miles in good day light and 10 miles in the dusk) so it probably was just a coincidence and the result of speed bumps that they blew within 24 hours.
And the mobile number I registered to my Oyster card is getting a lot of
0845 missed calls. TfL are the only people with that number as I bought a new SIM card just for them.
Sounds like you've got too much on your mind. It's stressful working away isn't it, especially in London? I'm glad I've been relegated to sweeping the workshop floor and making the tea.
I have a couple of cheap DVMs which plug into the cigarette lighter to help diagnose such things. They need checking against a good meter but are fine for confirming alternator and battery condition.
And way before alternators! I'm not sure that the E Series even had a regulator - its box-shaped predecessor (my first car!) certainly didn't. It just had a 3-brush dynamo with the moveable (but not in real time) third brush controlling how much of the output was fed back to the field windings[1]. Almost certainly relied on the battery charging load to prevent the output voltage going sky high.
[1] Although it was a 6-volt system, you could get more than 12 volts out of the dynamo by moving the third brush as far as it would go. The previous owner had done this, and had partially converted the car to
12v. The battery and light bulbs had been changed, so they were ok. The indicator (semaphore) solenoids hadn't - so the arms shot up at great speed. Worst of all, the ignition coil hadn't been changed, causing serious misfiring such that I got through a couple of half-shafts before I realised what was happening.
In medical circles, they always use a big magic marker to indicate which part of the body is due to be cut open. I think maybe we can learn from this practice. From my point of view of course, I need it in tactile mark, but then I'm no surgeon nor driver. Brian
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