Symptoms:
One: On initial startup, the genny used to take between one and three seconds to get to the 12V range; the idiot light went out when the power came up. Now, it takes about three minutes of idling before the light goes out; The first time I rev it to more than 1,200 rpms, it goes out like it should. I generally let the car warm up for a few minutes before I drive it.
Two: After about 10 minutes of routine driving at 3,000 rpms and an engine oil temperature of 190 degrees (consistently), the light will come on. In my car, 3K is about 60-65 mph. I have noticed the light going out with a change in rpms, either speeding up or slowing down -- but the fix is not something I can troubleshoot because I'm at speed, which kind of makes this a good candidate for forum quorum diagnosis.
Three: The delay in the light going out has gotten longer and longer. When I was cruising in mostly third the other night with Kelly in his Red Baron, the light went on and off intermittently. On the way back home, the light never came on until I hit 3,000 again, in fourth. The car had been sufficiently cooled at Kelly's house to be considered a cold start on that trip back to my house.
Four: This has happened before, always with heat involved. It seems to take about 10 minutes for the car to get up to its operating range. I have a DTM shroud with the bus oil cooler sticking up out of a papoose on the forward side, with the ground wire for the voltage regulator running along the fiberglass at the base of the cooler. It's off the cooler by milimeters and wired on a logical route; there's not enough spare there to reroute the wire to a cooler position.
Five: After Carlisle, when I described to The Wrench what was happening with the generator light (remember the 7.5 quarts of oil and the ground wire on the starter being the source of my "oil" light pain?), he took all of the ground connections loose from the battery, the starter and the voltage regulator. He cleaned and remade the contacts, and then did the same for every wire on the generator. That seemed to have solved my problems for a time, but that's also when I got my cooler. ... So ...
My thoughts:
Either I'm generating heat too close to the voltage regulator's wiring by having it right up next to the cooler, I've got a generator going bad, or my electric fan which comes on at 180 degrees is sapping my car's ability to produce 14v and regulate it at 12v. I am not an electrical genius. I can re-route wires, I can install pieces and I understand magnetism and general electrical principles, but I have no idea how to tell (in the field) whether I need a new generator. If I buy one of those VR-having alternators, will my car be able to keep up with demand better -- or am I barking up the wrong tree?
Thoughts?
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