In a message dated 2/5/99 3:47:13 AM Eastern Standard Time,
DDashwood@softwright.co.uk writes:
> Good Morning listers,
>
> I am just about to buy my first ever Spitfire - '77 1500. Problem is
> the alternator is completely gone. I told the current owner I need her
> to get it fixed before I can buy the car, because I don't know if I'll
> be able to get it home otherwise - and she didn't seem to have a problem
> with this.
>
> Yesterday, she phoned me to say it would take two weeks to get a new
> alternator delivered. No problem, I said, I'll see if I can get one any
> faster, and 15 minutes later I'd found a Triumph specialist who said
> they'd send me one straight away.
>
> So I phoned the owner up again - and that was when she told me that,
> according to her brother-in-law, who's the family Spitfire expert, this
> car doesn't have a standard alternator. He had asked her to look at the
> wires coming out the back of the alternator so he could work out what
> alternator it was, and she'd told him that it had two thick wires and
> two thin wires - and that was how he knew it wasn't the standard
> alternator.
Dean,
An alternator is an alternator is an alternator! If you can get it to fit
mechanically, you can get it to fit electrically. If the car has been
modified, it's hard to tell what has been done, but my guess is this:
one of the two small wires is brown with a yellow stripe, which is the
ignition warning light wire,
the other small wire is brown, and is the sensing lead,
the two large wires are brown, and are the main charging leads to the battery,
and will connect from the alternator to the starter solenoid where the main
battery lead connects.
Check out: http://www.vtr.org/maintain/alternator-overview.html
for an explaination of how all this works. Following that, you should be able
to hook up your new alternator with no problems.
As for how long you can go on just the battery, the coil will be the only
thing you need to have operationg just to get the car home (unless you are
driving at night), and the coil draws around 3 amps. Use the amp/hour rating
of your battery to determine how long it can supply 3 amps. Just don't use
anything else that you don't have to.
Dan Masters,
Alcoa, TN
'71 TR6---------3000mile/year driver, fully restored
'71 TR6---------undergoing full restoration and Ford 5.0 V8 insertion - see:
http://members.aol.com/danmas/
'74 MGBGT---3000mile/year driver, original condition - slated for a V8 soon
'68 MGBGT---organ donor for the '74
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