Hi y'all-- (Ron K, George, you out there?)

I'm en route from Seattle to Minnesota and I have found myself in Glasgow, Montana with a bright red AMP light leading the way. Here's the condensed version:

1967 Volvo 122s with B20 engine and original generator (not really original, I swapped it from my wagon before I left and now THIS one failed). The first 1000 miles were fine, but then the light would stay on for a second after starting, then for five seconds, then for ten, and then it didn't go out. I wound up in Calgary, Alberta (my convoluted route being shaped by circumstance and the hitchers I'd pick up) with a dead battery after driving with the light on for about two hours. *** ODD THING NUMBER 1: *** On the way to Calgary, the light refused to go out for the first time. It stayed on no matter what the revs, so I pulled over to see if I could find something amiss. When I shut off the key, the light was still on! I pulled the key out and held it out the window, still on! I threw the key across the parking lot. AMP LIGHT STILL ON! I wiggled stuff, battery connections, etc. and it finally went out. I decided to drive to calgary before the car was completely dead (trust me, this is the short version) and found a Volvo repair place, Bert & Jack's, but they had closed 15 minutes before (which is about 12 minutes U.S. with the exchange rate and all). I considered staying the night in their parking lot, but got antsy and determined to fix it myself, pulled the generator (have I mentioned how much I HATE pulling these %#^%^%# things out?). I hooked it up to my battery charger (oh yes, I parked by an outlet) and it spun like a motor. I took off the band and could see the brushes. They were getting low I think (I've never seen new ones) but there seemed enough meat on them to work properly and the spring wasn't to the bottom of the holder yet. Made a steel wool swab from a ball point pen and with the generator spinning, held it to the commutator. When I pulled it away, it was spinning faster! I thought I'd fixed it and was clouded with pride as I stuck it back in the car, turned the key and DAMN! THAT RED LIGHT!!! ARGGHHGGGHH!!

*sigh*

Armed with the Chilton Manual and a few tools, I pulled it again (Grrrr), took it apart, cleaned the badly scored commutator, sanded it with auto body superfine steel wool paper, re-scored the lines in between the copper bands with a switchblade, cleaned everything with gas and a rag, and autographed the case. This time I was sure it would work, and it D I D .

Until I got to Montana.

Same thing happened, same series of symptoms including the no-key-but-light-remains-on phenomena, leading finally to a dead battery. Now the car's sitting in front of a pawn shop in the hot sun, stinking with the dead fish smell of millions of bug corpses on the radiator, and I feel stupid with the hood up when all the cowboys look over and laugh. "What's that got, 30 horsepower? Haw haw haw!" and drive away in their HUGE pickups.

*sigh again*

Last night when the car pulled that trick where the light stays on even though I mailed the key to Siberia, The starter wouldn't engage even though the lights were bright and I was getting 12.4 V off the battery so I pulled and cleaned all the connections accociated with power; The negative cable to the firewall was so corroded I wondered why it ever worked at all. I also cleaned and re-attached the three wires to the starter, and the ground cable from the block to the radiator. I was in front of an old hotel and asked the woman at the desk for some Vaseline to treat the connections after I had cleaned them. All she had was a packet of burn ointment, so I tried it and it seemed to work great! It also helped to soothe the pain in my fingers. After attaching everything, it started! But the red light was still on, sucking what little power I had left in order to tell me what little power I had left.

Here's the part I didn't tell you. I was running a lot of accessories. At night I'd run driving lights and a stereo with a 400W amp, but it's 100W per channel and I was only using two channels and the amp was only turned up halfway. I didn't use it after I fixed the genny the first time until I got cocky and thought I had fixed it so well that I could use the amp, plus, I wanted to listen to the Beatles and at the time thought it was worth it, even if I had to fix the generator the next day. Dumb...

I've guessed (and this is only a deluded, intuitive vision) that perhaps the added draw from these accessories, plus the previously poor connections and 36-year-old wiring had caused a backup of electrons which had somehow burned the commutator. Is this plausable? I have a 80 amp alternator from an early 1980s 240... If I can figure out how to mount it, would it hurt to put that in? What's the best goop to use for electrical connections?

I'll be hanging out at this library all day, so I'm grateful for responses. Thank God for Brickboard....

Thank you,

Ben


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