a pleasant days spannering ensued..

after checkingh thing sover and buying biuts n bobs for MOT, new wiperblade, new flexibrake hose etc i got on with the dull jobs….

foglamp – not working because there;s no bulb in it..
change wiper,
clean gunky green corroded contacts on numberplate lights. the one that was working now stops working and the other one starts working. the multimeter says 4.65volts, methinks this may have something to do with it….

twiddle on other bits n pieces. then check alternator output. 0.00volts. not too good.

decide to swap for the other alternator so pull it out and strip the fan and pulley etc and swap them onto the other alternator and go to mount it it only to find that it has the wrong mounting lugs…
of course it doesn’t fit… and of course i’ll only check after i’ve taken the other one apart…

so. strip the fan and pullet etc but get side tracked by idle cleaning of the bits (it’s a kharmic maintenance thing….) and decide they need to be painted. so the pulley gets gloss black and for some reason (because it was there in the box if truth be told) the fan gets a couple of coats of Volkswagen Brilliant Orange.

now the engine bay is starting to look the a little silly but for some reason (i told you ! kharmic maintenance) it now outputs a steady 13.6volts, like it used to originally.

after leavign the battery on charge all day (and getting distracted by painting all the gloss paint in the hall, finally…) i fired it all up and got the strobe gun on it.
it was hugely over advanced so i rectified that but it the distributor does not seem to be advancing more than about 2 degrees. it’s a dual diaphragm vacuum advance unit that it kinda temporary but i think it has seen better days.
I need to inverstigate what to swap into it’s place. with luck a 009 and a pertronix electronic module. ultimately i’d like to rip it all out and go back the DTA EFI & coilpack system i was using on the samba but that’s ????? so i’ve been chatting with people about trying the DIY megasquirt EFI system but i have a sneaky suspicion it may be false economy. Conor at Raceshack has been telling me about so of the MOTEC systems on cars he’s had in for tuning recently and he’s v impressed. ah well. we’ll see what happens. the challenge now is to see if i can get it done before big bang… three weeks away and it’s not looking good.

wish me luck.