Tasmin 280i charging system warning light

[mrzigazaga]

Hi

Can anyone help with what type of bulb for the warning light i need please and how difficult it is to get to

Cheers

Mark

[mrzigazaga]

Guess i should have checked to see if it was a fuse first but 3 hours later and the dash is half out...the bulb is okay so some testing tomorrow, good time to trim the dash and sort some of the dodgy connections out though, all needs doing


Cheers

[Wedg1e]

It's unlikely to be a fuse, especially if you haven't noticed anything else not working.
My money would be on the alternator brushes, but it could be a bad earth or faulty regulator.

[mrzigazaga]

Wedg1e said:

It's unlikely to be a fuse, especially if you haven't noticed anything else not working.
My money would be on the alternator brushes, but it could be a bad earth or faulty regulator.

Thanks Ian...the alternator is new, i thought the bulb may stay on if the alternator is not good?..going to check the alternator this morning and associated wiring...

Cheers

Mark

[mrzigazaga]

Hi

Well we refitted the connection on the warning light feed from alternator as it seemed lose and touching the casing, however nothing was coming out of the terminal it is connected to when running and the bulb holder had live both on the live & earth sides although the bulb would not light up or stay on..tried it with the bulb in the holder in case it earths it out and still nothing, the only time it worked was when it was either me pushing the dash back in place or when my mate accidentally crossed the middle terminal with the small end one, this may have been enough to energise the alternator to start charging, we turned the car off and then it stopped charging when we re-started it....bit of a head scratcher, so the dash is now out and hopefully if i can replace a lot of the dodgy terminals it may reveal a problem...

[BlueWedgy]

I wonder If It was the same person that wired yours, wired mine

[mrzigazaga]

BlueWedgy said:

I wonder If It was the same person that wired yours, wired mine

Someone asked me if that was from factory, i did say "I doubt it"... but maybe they were..

[Wedg1e]

Nope, the 'all-black' loom of the early cars is definitely original, with little coloured sleeves at each end to denote the function.
Alas the sleeves perish and fall off, but in the meantime they discolour so being certain what you're looking at is helped by a lot of natural light.

However, I'm not sure why the main loom appears to be coloured while the instruments are all-black - all those blue bullets and spades wouldn't be factory to the best of my knowledge.

Leftover instrument panel from early production fitted to the car with the later loom, or a replacement loom fitted at some point... dunno.

Normally you'd expect an ignition-switched feed to the warning lamp, from there to the alternator. With the engine stopped the lamp finds an earth path through the alternator/regulator, once the engine spins up the rising voltage from the windings is rectified and applied to the other side of the lamp which makes it go out as no current is flowing through it. If you had 12v on both sides of the bulbholder with no bulb in, that does sound a bit off.

Edited by Wedg1e on Monday 15th December 21:21

[mrzigazaga]

Thanks Ian..that makes sense

[Wedg1e]

mrzigazaga said:

Thanks Ian..that makes sense

Back in about '96 when I was still learning the vagaries of the Tasmin, I set about systematically dismantling the car to create my own wiring diagrams as such information was hard to come by (bear in mind the dealers wouldn't even tell you if the rear wheel bearings were the same as the Granada).
By chance a guy called Simon Fletcher at Arvin Exhausts was on the same mission... and one day a fax (remember them!?) turned up at work from him, with the diagram for the 'all-black' wired cars spread over three or four pages.
I still have the fax somewhere, although it's very faded... luckily I scanned it at work a couple of decades back so have a working copy as well.
Whether Simon still has a Wedge (or indeed any other TVR) or whether, indeed, Arvin are still going I don't know - could google it, I suppose

One of my customers used to be Two Gates Wheels at Telford, formerly Telcast, who made the Tasmin's original alloys. I happened to enquire of my contact there whether they could still make them and he said the casting dies had been scrapped some time back - it was about '99 when I asked the question!

Another customer was West Yorkshire Foundries in Leeds, where the Rover V8 blocks (and I think heads) were cast almost till the end of production... alongside the Rolls-Royce 6.75L V8. I blagged a rusty old piece of iron checkerplate from one of their fitters and it's been the top of my main workbench ever since.

Also Sarginsons in Coventry, who cast manifolds and the like for the later cars (Cerbera era) as well as other parts for the Rolls V8. I recall that they had problems with the sump pan for it, it was a very large alloy casting that suffered from porosity on the flat area - one guy had the job of digging out the surface-breaking stuff and TIG welding it back. One time I was there and a guy wandered in with a couple of manifolds under his arm. I spotted the TVR logos and said 'Oh, quality products for our friends in Blackpool there' and he said 'Nah, just some s**t for TVR' and went out laughing.

Still another was Alloy Wheels International in Cardiff (now a housing estate) - they didn't do anything for TVR though they did for Lotus and Rolls-Royce, small-volume stuff by their standards. At the time the then-new Elise was suffering from failures of the wheel spokes and they were destructively testing wheels (on the quiet) to get to the bottom of it. Their biggest wheel was 20", for Rolls... nobody else used wheels anywhere near that size. Look around any car park now though...