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For some time now my car hasn't charged at idle (and the alt light doesn't come on in key position II). I assumed that it was a lazy regulator, but I was too lazy to do anything about it, so long as the alternator worked when I was driving fast, which is most of the time.
Haroon's post below got me re-interested, and so I took the brushes out; they were fine, which is a good thing because I could not melt the solder anyway. I do have a set of generic replacement brushes, guess I can give them to someone to make jewelry out of or something, because the old ones are IN there.
So fooling around with that didn't help, neither did tightening the field wire connection on the alternator, which was slightly loose; the two nuts had turned together out the stud, but the captive connector was still tight between them.
Using a test light to ground the field wire got me a shining alt light on the dash panel, but grounding the alternator body to the car body did not.
So the way it is now I'll have no charging until I go down the road a bit and wind her out; then the alternator will come to life and appear to charge normally.
Any idears?
My questions run to things like:
What's on the other end of the field wire stud, is it something that could have come loose or disconnected?
If there is something in there that came loose is it something I might have a stab at, or should I just shrug and buy another alternator?
I'm coming up on timing belt time anyway, so the alternator could come all the way out when I get to that.
I'm assuming since I got a good light from grounding the field wire that the wiring harness is okay.
Thnaks for any help.
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