Sandringham 6x6

[m_c]

There's something a little funky happening with the alternator, seems to take a good few minutes or more (at least today) for it to kick in and bump the voltage up to 14V but once it kicked in it stayed there. Something to monitor and investigate. Battery hasn't been on charge at all since it's been on the road so it's obviously charging, I'd just expect it to start more or less straight away. The charge light also doesn't light up with the ignition on but I've been known to dislodge that before.

If the warning lamp isn't working, the alternator is then reliant on residual magnetism to self-excite, which will only happen at higher revs, and if it's been sat for a while, might not even self-excite.

Old school regulators, the warning lamp essentially earthed through the rotor and provided the current for excitation which is why they were always a 2.2W bulb, however newer regulators (which are often fitted to recon units), the warning lamp simply activates the regulator, then the regulator pulls the excitation current directly from the battery terminal, however it still needs the warning lamp feed to get things charging or for the alternator to self-excite, which again, might not happen.

It usually takes high revs for a few seconds for an alternator to self-excite, so with a non-working lamp, depending on driving style and alternator gearing, it might simply not have been spun fast enough to start charging.

 

[sako243]

It sat at 4500rpm for a good few seconds so it had enough revs. The exciter terminal is notoriously crap on these and this one doesn't feel or look great.

I'll do some investigations tomorrow but alternators aren't usually that dear and I can almost certainly get a new one on Tuesday.

 

[fizzy]

First time it's been on the motorway in probably the best part of a decade. Yeah it's only two lanes but that was just the start of the M4.



Monitoring my gauge never saw temp go above 89°C even sat in traffic (dropped back down to about 83) over an hour non stop down dual carriageways and motorway.

70mph is 2700 to 2750rpm and the wideband was reporting low 14s whilst on a bit of throttle and then leaned right back when off. There appears to be a point whilst accelerating above 3krpm where it goes lean so I'll be taking a look at that.

Going up the big hill outside Carmarthen entering at 70mph in 4th and staying in 4th it slowed down to about 63mph so perfectly usable but again some tuning to be done as it could have easily put more fuel in based off the AFR.

So on the whole perfectly usable and I reckon about twice as fast as the 110 at accelerating. Certainly keeps up with all the modern traffic with ease but there's definitely more to give.

I've populated another PCB so I'll get the SD card logging implemented on the bench and then I can log these and go over it in slow time more accurately.

My brand new VW transporter/ transit unladen can't hold 70mph on that hill either and I have to use 4th

 

[sako243]

My brand new VW transporter/ transit unladen can't hold 70mph on that hill either and I have to use 4th

I suspect it would have easily if I'd dropped to 3rd (only a 4 speed), bear in mind this has quite tall gearing with the high range in the transfer box being 0.996:1. It was also running at an AFR of low 14s going up the hill so could have quite easily added more fuel to drop it to ~12.5 if needed.

Got some comms issues to sort out for the laptop. My gauge has been absolutely rock solid but the moment I open TunerStudio on the laptop it all goes to poop most of the time, particularly with the engine running. TunerStudio inadvertently updated itself on the laptop and I don't think it's been as reliable since - I had a look at the recent release notes for Speeduino and they include some bug fixes related to the serial port to TunerStudio so I'm going to look at that next. First check will be scoping the UART just to make sure I've got clean signals, if that's the case then I'll update the software on the ECU and see if that improves things.

 

[minimutly]

I suspect it would have easily if I'd dropped to 3rd (only a 4 speed), bear in mind this has quite tall gearing with the high range in the transfer box being 0.996:1. It was also running at an AFR of low 14s going up the hill so could have quite easily added more fuel to drop it to ~12.5 if needed.

Got some comms issues to sort out for the laptop. My gauge has been absolutely rock solid but the moment I open TunerStudio on the laptop it all goes to poop most of the time, particularly with the engine running. TunerStudio inadvertently updated itself on the laptop and I don't think it's been as reliable since - I had a look at the recent release notes for Speeduino and they include some bug fixes related to the serial port to TunerStudio so I'm going to look at that next. First check will be scoping the UART just to make sure I've got clean signals, if that's the case then I'll update the software on the ECU and see if that improves things.

When I worked at Whitland dairy we had a Pasilac (Danish) butter making and boxing machine with a poxy Berkel inline weighing scales. Circuit boards in slots - probably 8 or more, interconnected with ribbon cable and dual inline board edge plugs, it was a pain to say the least. Anyway one early shift I had to diagnose and fix this thing because the line was on stop. Turned out the UART board had died.Well we had an old guy who's job it was to be an interface between engineering and the managers, a general old pain in the ****. So, line fixed and running, he asked what had failed and I told him. Out comes the little black reporting book, " Uart board " says I - "what does that mean? So slowly I told him universal asynchronous etc etc. The old guy blew his top, convinced I was winding him up, which did happen occasionally I must admit..Happy days.