Club 80-90 Forums

I have a westie with a leisure battery and a split charge relay fitted. In the past the battery warning light would stay on for a split second when starting the engine. My limited understanding is that the battery light goes off, once the relay has switched over to include the leisure battery.
Anyway while on holiday, the battery warning light was staying on for minutes at a time, unless I switched the engine off and back on again. Then the warning light did go off each time.
On the last day of my holiday the battery warning light started flickering at higher revs and speeds over 55mph.

1) I have a new alternator which was fitted 3 months ago.
2) The fan belt is properly adjusted.
3) Following a long drive the battery is showing 13.6 volts, an hour after turning the engine off.
4) On tickover the battery shows 14.5 volts but that goes down to 14.4 volts when the engine is revved.
I drove to a friend's house from holiday yesterday to drop their things off and the engine was running fine. 20 minutes later and the engine decided to stall several times on my way home. As I was parking, the stalling went away again.
So, my question is, are these battery light and stalling faults likely to be connected or are the problems coincidental? I need to try and get this fixed as we are due to go to Dubs at the Castle on Friday. Cheers guys.

The light goes off when the alternator starts to charge , it's quite common to have to "blip" themthrottle to just "up" the revs a tad momentarily to make it go off if the brushes are dirty or worn.
It has nothing to do with the split charge

I suspect you are either suffering from a vac leak which is causing your idle speed to be just a little lower than it should be , and / or the brush pack need cleaning or replacing .

Two Phillips screws and ten min , whip the brush pack out and inspect ( post a pic here ?) and give the armature a squirt of electrical contact cleaner ( not WD40 ever)

Cheers Steve
The alternator is charging ok as far as I can tell and the alternator itself is a new one. This flickering light is a pain. Perhaps the new alternator has been fitted with an inferior regulator pack. I'll fit a new pack and see.
As to stalling, I thought about a vacuum leak, but the problem is intermittent. Can a vacuum leak be intermittent? It was ok during a long drive, then I started up again a bit later and it stalled several times. Then it ran ok again after 5 minutes of the engine ticking over.

mixture weak at idle - choke

I find that when my van (with the Pieburg carb) come's back from the garage with the mixture set by the CO machine, it can be quite sensitive to a problem with the vacuum pipe from the carb to the distributor (Mine never seem to last that long before splitting!) - Will stall when the engine's just come off the choke, but not fully warmed through yet, and sometimes will be fine, other times it'll be a pig until fully warmed up. By regularly checking the plugs to keep an eye on the mixture, I've found that just turning the mixture/CO screw just 45 degrees counter clock wise to make it a bit richer, plus replacing my vacuum pipes with something a bit thicker walled, my van's running spot on Just make a note of where the screw is before you start, and what you change each time, then if you're not happy, you can put it back to where it started and keep investigating other things.

Hope that helps,
Ben.

So, the battery light issue has been resolved. Gary the mobile auto electrician popped over this evening. The cause of this was that the plastic insulation on the thin blue alternator warning connection wire had rubbed through and a couple of the copper threads were causing the problem. I guess this was causing a kind of arcing against a coolant pipe. He replaced the wiring and the problem is fixed. Now I will try and sort out the stalling (probably a vac hose problem) tomorrow. Fingers crossed.