Make It Better to Make It Gone

I may have a prospective buyer for Lucy. He answered my Craigslist ad last week and we had a tentative appointment for him to stop by Sunday afternoon, but that ended up not happening (he did call me, so my faith in mankind is still intact). We rescheduled for Wednesday evening, but I'll leave Lucy parked on the curb while I drive something else to work tomorrow, so the guy can start his inspection prior to my arrival.

Much of this last weekend was consumed with non-car activities, but I was able to complete Lucy’s alternator swap Friday night. With my new Harbor Freight soldering iron, I finished splicing the LM alternator harness into the EM harness. After protecting the soldered joints with shrink tube, electrical tape, and plastic armor, I installed the new voltage regulator. Since it is smaller than a stock EM regulator, I had to fashion a couple adapters from strips of sheetmetal leftover from past radio installations. I was finally able to turn the key and see if the GEN-FAN light would go on and then go off once the engine was running. I first plugged my charging system monitor (voltmeter) into Lucy’s lighter socket so I could see how much electricity the alternator of unknown provenance was putting out – if anything. The light came on with the key in the ON position, so I knew I’d wired up the idiot light circuit correctly. The light went off once I got Lucy’s engine to fire. The monitor was showing a nice, steady reading of greater than 14 volts. Project successfully completed.


The only other car work that was accomplished occurred Sunday afternoon and was precipitated by a Saturday morning text message from Ariel, “My car wouldn’t start so I had to take your truck,” and, “the battery is dead I think.” Thinking the terminals were corroded, I gathered up my voltmeter, wrenches, wire brushes, and Ringo’s key and headed out to the curb. The meter read over 12 volts once I probed the battery’s two terminals, so I plopped my butt into the driver’s seat and turned the key. At first, the engine barely turned, but eventually it began spinning fast enough for the engine to start. I let it idle for a while noting the charging voltage was above 14. That told me the alternator and voltage regulator were doing their job. Confident I’d put enough juice into the battery to get another start out of it, I turned off the engine and thoroughly cleaned the positive and negative terminals and connectors, reattached everything, turned the key to START, and the engine returned to a nice, steady idle. Fifteen more minutes of idling and charging and I pronounced him good-to-go (with fingers crossed on both hands). By the way, he started right up this morning.

I Thought This Day Would Never Come

The day when I actually got to choose what fleet work I wanted to do instead of what fleet work had to be done. Ringo is back on the road and, other than a rough idle during warm-up, seems to be performing properly. I’m waiting on Glinda’s replacement speedometer cable, but she’s still running reliably as my current daily-driver. Heidi sits patiently waiting for better weather, but when I did press her into service a week ago, she went willingly down the road. Mikhaila’s still not quite ready to tackle working on Two-Tone, so that left me with Lucy.

To solve the engine dying problem, I first cut away the tape over the connection between two 10 gauge wires that carry the main 12 V from the voltage regulator into the main harness. They were corroded and looked like they’d been getting hot – an indicator of increased resistance. After wire brushing everything back to shiny metal, I coated the connectors’ surfaces with dielectric grease, plugged them back together, and then enclosed the connection in a piece of shrink-tubing. That was Saturday afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to do the generator to alternator swap on Lucy. I thought I had all the pieces - the trick was finding them. I located the LM correct adapter on the shelf, its new gasket amongst a collection of gaskets, and the correct LM engine compartment wire harness. I dug out six different alternators and selected the one that spun the quietest. After raiding the Corsa engine for some bolts, all I was missing was a voltage regulator. To swap the adapter, I had to, in addition to the generator, remove the fuel pump. Once all the new stuff was bolted in place and the fuel pump and fanbelt in place, I tackled the wiring. The new harness can’t just drop into place – it has to be spliced into the existing wiring. The smaller wires solder easy enough with shrink-tube going over the joints, but soldering the main 10 gauge wires together takes more than my 45 watt iron. I’ve never been able to get reliable heat out of my big gun (rated 140 W), and last night was more of the same – couldn’t even melt solder. I cleaned it up and will try to get Home Depot to exchange it for a new one.