Larry Snyder wrote:
>
> I'm getting the Haynes Z-S Carb manual. Any comments on it? Anyone have any
> advice or instructions on rebuilding a Z-S CD150?
Just make sure that the manual covers *your* carb (can't remember if it does).
####
Greg Gall, with newly running TR7 wrote:
> Does anybody know how to go about having my seatbelts replaced under the
> recall, in Canada?
>
> Should I be contacting the same guy at Jaguar Cars (in the states)?
I'll write them a letter this week. I'll tell you what happens.
######
> From: "Chris Kent Kantarjiev" <cak@parc.xerox.com>
> Subject: stupid charging tricks
>
> Does anyone really understand how the generator/voltage
> regulator/cutout system works? I mean REALLY, like you can explain it to me?
>
> A couple of weeks ago, the charging lamp began staying on after
> starting Sarah (TR4A).
OK, I don't know about TR4s, but maybe this will help. In modern cars, the
charge lamp is connected in series between the battery and the energizing
winding of the alternator (on alternators, this is on the rotor, connected
trhough slip rings). The normal current flow would be DC out of the rectifier,
possibly through some protection diodes to the regulator, and the
excitation winding would be supplied from here. If no power is coming out of
the little machine, the excitation winding will draw current from the battery,
and this current would turn the light on. On a DC generator, the principle of
making the power is similar, the difference being that the main winding
is on the rotor and connected to the ouside world by a commutator ring that
converts the power to DC without need for a separate, electronic regulator.
Again, I don't know about TR4s, but you know how usually the charging system
doesn't produce power right away, or you'd be trying to generate electricity
with your starter motor when you crank the engine :-). It's usually some rpm
dependent thing that kicks the generator (term used loosely) in once the
car is properly started. This can be part of the regulator that just senses
the voltage coming off the generator and lets the current pass once the
voltage gets high enough, or it could be a relay that does more or less the
same thing. Before the system kicks in, the charge light will be on (those
of you with GM cars know that they use the charge light to tell the choke
heater when to turn off after startup, and this can cause some strange
problems. Check a wiring diagram to make sure that nothing fishy is linked
to the charge light).
Anyway, if you must purposefully rev the engine to get the relay to click
and patch the generator into the system, then the generator/regulator is
not passing enough power to run the relay. This is either becuase the
generator/regulator output is too low, or the relay has gone berserk and
isn't sensitive enough anymore. Both could be dirty contact problems,
especially if everything's fine once current starts flowing. Does it charge
well (that is, normally) when the charge light is off? (i.e., does the
light ever come back on again?) Is the voltage level normal when the light
is off? It it better/worse when wet?
#####
Now that I've gone and added significantly to it, I'd like to add a word on
list volume in the context of the TRF business. The biggest problem with
this list is not deciding what's appropriate and what's not, it's being able
to easily ignore what I don't want to read, and to easily find the good bits.
In undigested form, this list (especialy these days) would clog the mailbox.
With the digest, it's a pain to reply to specific people, save a piece of a
message, and follow a thread. I know that there's a lot of opposition to
moving the list to Usenet (lots of people don't have access), but has anyone
found a way of dealing with digests (at the receiving end) such that they
act more like a newsgroup? It would be much easier to deal with the volume
in such a format.
Jody Levine ---+--
jlevine@rd.hydro.on.ca | |~|
Toronto, Canada | |~\ 7 The Mobile Doorstop
|