car is a 67 Volvo 122 which has developed a habit of eating up voltage regulators. They are the Bosch three wire types, and the car has a generator in it. One of the poles inside the V. Regulator (on the generator side) starts arcing accross its contacts, which eventually causes the contacts to melt enough that the gap between the contacts closes, and the contact can no longer open and close like it should to make or break the charging circuit. This is when the Amp light comes on on the dash. I can go in and scrape off the little crap which collects on the contacts and then it seems to work again, but still I can see a little green spark between the contacts, and the amp light sorta flickers dimly. This happened before, and I just kept scraping the collected junk off until there was not much of the contact points left. Then I replaced the damn thing and the new one worked fine until yesterday when the amp light came on brightly as I was driving home. This morning I opened it up and sure enough, the contacts had some melted solder looking junk on them. I scraped it off so the contact could open and close again, but it was still sparking a little bit at idle. Then I bent the contact point so that it was closer to the moving part of the switch, and now it doesnt seem to spark anymore and the amp light stays mostly off, but this is very perplexing to me and seems to me like there is something else wrong, if my new voltage regulator is going the route of my old one after only about a week of driving! its almost as though the electromagnet isnt getting enough juice to close the contact all the way or something.. Thanks
Nate