I think the BIG fuse has gone....

[cacatous]

What are the symptoms of said fuse blowing?

[Habib]

battery not charging. Fuse is between battery and alternator.

[mike_e]

Rev Counter playing up, mainly at higher revs, battery light may come on, (it didn't on mine). Assuming it'll start in the first place, eventual misfiring and then it'll die on the spot.

If you got a voltmeter, measure the voltage at the battery terminals when running, should be around 14V, if it's 12V or less, then it isn't charging. Fuse is the obvious fault. It's located on the top of the gearbox bell housing (under throttle linkage) inside a plastic cover. 100A blade type fuse, about a £1 to replace.

[trooper1212]

On mine. Rev counter stopped working completely, no battery light, speedo started to over read, complete shutdown whilst travelling in the outside lane of the M1, in rush hour, in the dark...

[and]

would it make your wipers go slow too ? and if you have slow wipers & dodgy rev counter should the car still start okay ?

[cacatous]

Right well I think the fuse has gone then!

Where can I buy one from? Halfwits? Or can the AA bring one out with them?

PS. Does anyone have a picture of where the big fuse resides and how I get to it without losing fingers?

[shpub]

Halfords will sell you a big gold plated fuse for that 3 Kwatt subbass woofer tweeter box thingy.... Why else would you need a 100 Amp fuse

You need to go to a decent auto factors or a dealer to get one.

Changing it is a bit of hassle becuase of the location and the fact that one end is connected to the battery and it is all too easy to short out onto the engine. So disconnect the battery first. Arc welding a socket extension to the fuel rail is not one of the more common modifications...

They can sometimes go high resistence with cracks or die as a result of an alternator failure. Had both in my TVR career.

[j_s_g]

shpub said:

Arc welding a socket extension to the fuel rail is not one of the more common modifications...

It was when the RAC man came to change mine, insisting "he knew what he was doing".

Don't imagine there's any difference on a 4.5 (?), but on my 4.2, it's right in the middle (left to right) of the engine bay, right up by the windscreen, under a little (black) cover about 1 1/2" x 3/4" in size. That lifts up to get to the fuse, which is itself about 1 1/2" long, a flat, rectangular metal blade, with a jut at either end for the connections. And it's a pain to get to - really needs a long-reach socket.

When mine went, noone had a the right fuse, so I was going to use a cut up jubilee clip as a make-shift replacement. In the end I just connected the two terminals together for a bit till I could get down to Joolz. Think I'd get it replaced at every service from now on.