What have I broken now ?

[Hoover.]

Happily been for 7hrs drive today, having some great fun, car going great, travelling down to the coast n back.... when I hit some uneven road surface that made the car come back down to earth with force to fling the glove box open... BUT also the red ignition light started coming on circa 2500rpm in all gears & neautral..... checked to see if anything dislodged, and all seems fine..... any ideas ?????

[EGB]

Alternator, or dislodged earth after hard landing?? Battery terminals, check??

[S3DaveP]

Connect a voltmeter to the battery and see if you're getting 13.5 to 15 v at the battery with the engine running at 2500rpm, if its less than 13v the alternator is not charging, as said above it may be a dodgy earth or connection on the alternator or chassis.
If you don't have a voltmeter, i have one you can borrow as i see from your profile you're local, just mail if you need it me.

P.S, i would not drive it like that until you are sure its charging as it will most likley leave you stranded somewhere and give the muppets an 'Oh look a TVR broken down' moment.

[V8 GRF]

You might have broken the 100a fuse?

[Hoover.]

Right will be checking all earths when I have some spare ME time, but going by the voltmeter it looks to be charging as the volts increase with the rpm

Dave cheers for the offer of voltmeter, but I think I should get one as I have sworn to myself that I need to get an understanding of car electrics....... was looking at them in Maplins before Xmas, one ain't going to break the bank

It's a 92 precat so no 100 amp to worry about thankfully .

Edited by Hoover. on Tuesday 27th December 18:30

[spend]

I think you'll need to try harder than that to wind Steve up

Is it the first time it's been out whilst the daylight is also not so bright? The early LED warning lights have a habit of glowing when the alt is charging the battery over 13v, if you have LEDS (can't recall if that was the case with early Griffs?). It ends up just just enough forward voltage over the field coils (essentialy 12v ref) to illuminate the LED. My solution was to lower the resistance of the resistor in parallel with the LED (at the back of the LED), replacing with a small filament bulb stops the glow dead BTW. The effect does seem more apparent when the battery is being charged ~ short runs away from the accumate or bright sunlight & it's not noticable.

[Hoover.]

Nope last run was in the dark ( 2 x 40 mins run, predominatly rapide moving )... so not an issue that has been unnoticed before, unless the black tape over the bulb has fallen off

The light isn't as bright as when you initially turn the ignition on, but it's not the dull glowing to which you refer to either Dave, I would say it's about 75% of the start up brightness.

I will check all the earths as I had them all cleaned and redone earlier in the year, maybe one has worked loose.

Edited by Hoover. on Tuesday 27th December 20:09

Actually who F am I kidding, I know I'll start it, not get a result, get frustrated and take it to the garage.

Edited by Hoover. on Tuesday 27th December 20:13

[spend]

You have a voltmeter in the dash what does that read?