There is good news about my car (a ute really) - It has moved from the street to the driveway. My brother helped me refit the alternator and charge the battery and start it. I think it is working but not charging enough because it only charges with about 1 amp of current and the voltage is only slowly increasing past 13 volts as the car idles.
In other words it runs the car but only if I dont use the lights, the windscreen wipers or anything else that uses a lot of power.
Next step is to buy a new regulator for the alternator…
October 30, 2007
My car is broken down…again. Last time it happened I got it towed home and then got somebody to come and fix it. It was very expensive. This time it broke down out in the country. I got it jump-started and found out that the alternator which charges the battery was broken.
So I tried to drive it the rest of the way home anyway,knowing that if I stalled it it wouldn’t start again.A good test of my manual driving skills! I have had this car nearly a year and before that I only drove automatic cars. I ran out of power as I reached the edge of the city, It was getting dark and a bit wet and I had no lights, wipers, speedometer, clock…Nothing. Only the blinkers worked and they went very slowly by the sound of it and eventually stopped too.
The car kept going a surprisingly long way and then suddenly as I was going about 40km/h through an intersection the car lost power and was just rolling…So I steered into the little triangle bit between the left turning lane and the left driving lane and stopped there. Not a bad stop to stop actually it could have been worse. I called the tow-truck and then when I had to describe where I was I realized that I was nearly home,outside a shopping centre. I went to the shops while i waited for the truck. It was a surreal fealing, going from being broken down on the road to being in a nicely lit shop and everything bright and clean. I could have almost forgotten my car was there and gone shopping!
Eventually the tow truck showed up and pulled my car up without any trouble. That is becoming a familiar experience. The tow truck driver started telling me about the benefits of insurance so I started asking him about obscure places where my car could get towed from for free if it broke down. I think he got a bit carried away with some of the answers because he said they would tow it back from the Kimberly which is only about 5000km away…
The car is back on the street outside my house now. Yesterday I took the alternator out of it and washed it because it was very dirty. The dirt alone probably stopped it working…My whole hands was black after I cleaned it from the grease. I tested all the parts of the thing and put it back together…It seems to work as far as I can tell so I have to still put it back in the car and test it some more and find out why the battery isnt charging. Maybe it was just a loose connection or something or maybe the regulator is not working properly at high speed.I really need to get the thing back on the fan-belt to test it properly.
The underneath of my car’s bonnet is slowly changing from black to silver as I replace all the parts that fail one by one…
Paul
October 28, 2007
