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Tom,
My positive battery cable is a replacement I got from a
local
battery place and they put on two heavy gauge wires on
it. Your way,
electrically speaking, is the same as mine. But do you
think that you might
have a 'cold' solder when you did your soldering ?
Check your battery ground; mine has come loose once or
twice. In
fact, check every ground you have on the bike - it is
Italian after all!
Bruce
'72 Eldo
'73 Alfa Romeo GTV
'86 Alfa Romeo Spider
-----Original Message-----
From: tom christian [mailto:tchri-@gmpexpress.net]
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 11:59 AM
To: Loopfram-@topica.com
Subject: Re: A little more success with Eldo - but...
(long)
Maybe there's an "aha" here. The two red wires
(regulator and ignition I think) I actually soldered
together and shrink wrapped into a single connection to
the positive terminal on the battery (in the last few
days, so no corrosion issues). Couldn't see why I needed
two separate connectors. Could that be the issue? If
it
was a problem wouldn't I see issues with the switch and
starter?
-tom
On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 11:50:28 -0400
Bruce Giller <bgil-@mitre.org> wrote:
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Last year, I rode my Eldo out to West Virginia for 3
days of riding
the hills with some friends. I had fully charged the
battery the night
before as preventive maintenance. It is about 5 hours
to the town
(Marlinton) from my place on the usual back country
roads. I hooked up with
some fellow bikers in the morning and about 4 hours into
the ride, we
stopped for a rest. And my bike wouldn't turn over -
had to push start it.
No indication from the idiot charging light that
anything was amiss. Soon
the idiot light started glowing dimly (or was I missing
it all along?). By
the time I got to Marlinton, I had turned off the
headlight to stop the
idiot light from glowing all the time no matter the
rpms.
Purchased a new garden tractor battery from a nearby
parts place and
put it in - no more idiot light. Checked the voltage
with my meter and I
was getting the correct voltages - around 14v at around
3k-4k rpm. I
assumed that the old battery no longer would take a
charge which is why it
died on me.
About 3-4 hours into the ride the next day, the idiot
light started
faintly glowing again!! This time we stopped in a town
for lunch. The
battery couldn't turn the engine over. I removed the
left side cover for a
look-see. There are two big red wires (plus the main
battery cable) on the
positive terminal. They are hooked to two wires going
into the wiring
harness: one goes to the ignition switch and the other
to (from?) the
generator. They were connected to each other with
bullet ends encased in
plastic covered metal bullet connector. And I could see
that the metal
connector had gotten black.
I disconnected each bullet connector from the wires and
found each
one had blackened residue in them. I scraped out the
residue as best as
possible and then used some WD-40 as a cleaner on both
the bullets and the
bullet connector. Push started the bike and the idiot
light went out. My
theory is that there was lots of arcing going on between
the bullet ends and
the connector due to small surface contact causing the
blackness. When I
got home after the ride, I soldered/heat shrink wrapped
these connections.
The moral of the story is that when charging your
battery you need
both the voltage and the amperage. I was getting the
voltage but due to the
worsening connections at the bullet connectors, I wasn't
getting the
amperage.
This also applies to dim/dark light bulbs; you might
have 12v at the
bulb but not enough amperage to heat it up to glow.
Been looking for an
induction DC amp meter for easy measuring but I don't
that anyone makes one.
Bruce
'72 Eldo |
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