british-cars
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Alternator swapping

To: jerry_kaidor@engtwomac.synoptics.com
Subject: Re: Alternator swapping
From: whs70@dancer.cc.bellcore.com (sohl,william h)
Date: 12 Aug 1992 17:19 EDT
>   RE>Alternator swapping
>Shel Hall writes:
> Much mo'bettah you should change the rest of the car to negative
>ground. Most of the positive-ground-era cars don't have much in the way
>of electronics; the lights don't care, the windshield wiper motor
>probably won't care, and the switches don't care.  About all you'd have
>to change is the heater blower motor and the starter
>
>   **** Correction:  The starter don't care.  The heater blower don't care,
>either.  About the only things that care are the ignition coil ( just reverse
>the wires ), the ammeter ( reverse the wires ) and the battery ( reverse the
>wires ).  Of course, when you do this on a generator-equipped car, you mustn't
>forget to repolarize it!
>
>     - Jerry
>p.s.  This changes for cars later than mine.  I think sixties cars started to
>have transistors in the tachometers, that kind of thing...

Probably true about the transistorized tachs, but I'll bet any
car that had a transistorized tach, also had made the change from
+ ground to negative ground.  Nothing in any TR (except + ground
radios which usually had a switch that could be changed to make
it a neg. ground radio) would prevent conversion to neg. ground.

VTR published a "how to do it" piece about 8 years ago.  Bob 
Shaller from Arizona has a nice write-up in his publication about
improving early TR's which includes a conversion of a TR3/4 to
an alternator (purists get upset I know).  The booklet is
now reprinted (and typeset) and is available from The Roadster
Factory.  I think it is titled.."More BS from
Bob Shaller" or something like that.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Sohl (K2UNK) BELLCORE (Bell Communications Research, Inc.)
Morristown, NJ             email via UUCP      bcr!dancer!whs70
201-829-2879 Weekdays      email via Internet  whs70@dancer.cc.bellcore.com


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>