Road trip alternator trouble, help needed..

[Lloyd]

Anyway, thought I would post up some more interesting road trip shots... Windmills in Holland and crossing the river Elber in Germany.

Yesterday, pushing on to get to the ferry in time, I took the car up to 160mph for the first time (de-resticted German autobahn). Plenty left under the right foot, I wonder if I would run out of gearing should I take it up all the way? 160mph seemed very easy, although it was interesting to watch the oil temps rise whilst doing this sort of speed!

[macspring]

Thanks for the photos.

Buy a multi meter in "Halfords" and check alternator and battery output for your piece of mind.

Kind regards.

[Lloyd]

Today was a much better day. Filled up with Shell Racing 100 (never seen that before) and prodded the loud pedal again on another nice bit of de-restricted autobahn.

I was pleased to see the car easily did 180mph, rate of acceleration at this point is massively different to at 160mph. Serious sweaty palms.

At this speed, with no aux rad, new larger oil cooler and a new main rad, the car quickly got oil temps of 130 and water 90. Air temp was reading 38 so not too surprising I suppose. I guess this is where the aux rad might be handy.

I was also shocked to see the locals propensity for just pulling out to overtake without seemingly checking their rear view mirrors - even driving at more normal speeds!

[prj]

Yeah, if you push it that hard that long the oil temps are bound to rise.
130 is okay though, nothing too bad.

[Henkjan]

I'm sure I've read before that the gauge is not wired directly to the battery or alternator, so you get losses as it goes throught the loom...

yep, it just takes it from the nearest wire... I've seen different readings depending on lights on or of..

@Lloyd: good to read your problem was fixed. only saw this thread today. would have been spotted earlier if your location would have been in the thread title

[Lloyd]

Yeah, if you push it that hard that long the oil temps are bound to rise.
130 is okay though, nothing too bad.

yeah, I had 150 at Spa last year (in 30 degree air temps) on track with the OEM oil cooler, hence the upgrade.

[Lloyd]

yep, it just takes it from the nearest wire... I've seen different readings depending on lights on or of..

@Lloyd: good to read your problem was fixed. only saw this thread today. would have been spotted earlier if your location would have been in the thread title

No worries, hope this is indeed permanently fixed. Today, I got the lowest readings on the voltage gauge when driving at 160 to 180mph (wife was watching the gauges not me!) with the highest when just pootling along at 60mph.

Not sure what the vmax would be on a flat autobahn. I think it would need to be a perfectly flat, smooth road for many miles to make the max. Maybe 190? The rate of change from 180 upwards is fairly sedate.

[johne]

I'm sure I've read before that the gauge is not wired directly to the battery or alternator, so you get losses as it goes throught the loom. Mine only reads 12v on the gauge but 14v at the battery. If you're getting 13v I'd say all is good, have a great trip

The voltmeter actually sits on the end of the loom extension for the aux gauges and measures the voltage it sees, not the voltage at the battery which is the one that counts.

Don't take the aux gauge voltmeter as anything other than an indication. It's only accurate if it's been calibrated recently and the voltage it measures will fall if say the sidelights are on, headlights, radiator fans or other items in the dashboard area are using electricity. When it does fall, if you measure actually at the battery you'll find you've still got 14 volts there - best not if you're doing 180mph at the time

John

[macspring]

180 is pretty impressive, don’t forget to re-check your tyres speed rating.

[Lloyd]

Thanks for your input. I will get a volt meter and test both alternator and battery today and hopefully put this to rest. Before running up to these speeds I carefully checked all four tyres over, pressures and lumps/bumps/nails etc. Tyres have the top speed rating.

I think there's a chance she will do 190mph. However, I'm not planning on revisiting those sort of speeds any time soon. Once was enough for me. Its actually surprisingly hard to be as smooth as you want to be with steering input at really high speed. You almost need to force yourself to relax and loosen up your grip, which is the opposite of what you automatically do when driving that fast for the first time.

[s2driveruk]

sounds like the smile factor has increased since i last read this thread...great photos and glad to see she's running sweetly now - 180mph is impressive. We had fun watching people clear out the way the vast majority of the time when Ciaran and I ran up the Autobahn from Swiss border to the Ring at a steady 150-160mph (gps) a couple of years back....only thing that freaked me out was the small rain channels cut into the surface on some of the concrete sections that run with the car, steering goes distinctly light its freaky!

[Lloyd]

Yeah, the steering does go very light.

[Avantus]

Impressive, and good to read that you managed to continue the trip

Still enough revs near the top end to do 190?
I did 290km/h but that's already over 7000rpm..

[Lloyd]

I don't know for sure. I wasn't paying too much attention to the tacho
Dmitri did increase the rev limit a bit so maybe it's possible? It would get close.

All theoretical as I'm not gonna go over 160 again

[Lloyd]

Managed to get a voltmeter onto the battery with the engine running.
With everything else off it was reading 14v with +/- 0.2 fluctuation.
Adding aircon, fans on max, radio, lights, full beam etc it dropped to 13.4v

So, all seems to be well.