EPIC electrical tale

[BottFodder]

Hi All,

Thought I'd post a the tale of my experience around Electrics in my VY Berlina. This is a bit of an epic so you might want to grab a beer.

This car has now down close to 230K, mechanically its superb. I filled up at Sutton Forest Shell on the way back to the Blue Mountains and at the bottom of the Hill (Emu Plains) it was showing 7.0 l /100 which is pretty amazing. BTW I only ever put 100% unleaded in this car - I think the 91 Octane 10% Ethanol blends are a rip off. Anyway...

A couple of weeks ago my Fan Amplifier (FA) - this car has climate control air - crapped itself and the blower would only run at 100%. I searched the forum and was redirected to a page about replacing the big transistor on the FA. I ordered the part from Futurelec, it took about 2 weeks to arrive and I soldered the new one back in. Problem fixed thought I....

Sometime around this I did a service, oil etc and replaced the plugs. I use the Bosch platinum ones. They are only $1.50 each more expensive than conventional, last 3 times as long and seem to make the car run a bit smoother. This was fine until the #4 plug lead decided that it had a real problem hanging off the plug and would fall off spontaneously. After about 6 stops to put it back on, I ditched the tin shield with the spring arrangement and the problem ceased.

Last weekend, my wife went to drive down the shops, battery flat. Bugger, a quick jump from the other car and we were off again. Next morning, same thing! Car started but only just. After I came back in I slipped my trusty Arlec 6 amp (had it forever) and the needle went to 6 amps. Ok I thought. The battery was low. This was about 11 AM. Next morning (8am) it was still on 6 amps! The battery is a "SuperCharge Gold' - a sealed Calcium Cell with one of those "magic eye" hydrometers built into it and it was red which indicated "check". It was only about 1 year old so I went down and hassled (wrongly it turned out) the local spare parts guys - Scotts at Springwood.

We had a discussion about charge rates and they mentioned that you needed a really beefy charger to bring a CCA battery up from flat - greater than 10 amps was mentioned. Didn't really believe this but as I work in Canberra, they swapped the battery out, put my old one on charge and were going to "give me ring" before close that arvo (this was Sunday). Didn't get a call, assumed the old cell pack was dead.

Got to Canberra and on Wednesday morning.... Car barely started. Shit - stuck in Canberra without tools, other car etc (not a member of the NRMA, I can change a tyre) so I found an auto elect who could slot me in. They declared the Alternator to be on the way out and slugged me $350 for a new alternator and $92 to fit it. Ok, I did ask for it to be done right now so I suppose that was OK. I was less than impressed by the apprentice who was cracking the tight bolts by doubling his spanners (ring on open) - sooner or later that has got to spread the jaws leading to a spanner that rounds rather undoes bolts - tough if it happens to be yours.

Car is then started and there was now a miss, reminiscent of the dropped plug lead - A quick check and I assumed it might be fouled (perhaps) so I drove away. It was actually running like a hairy goat so I drove back to that AE. They stuffed around pulling plug leads off and on and declared "you probably have one broken internally, we only looked at the charging system, don't know what would cause this" etc.

Mentioning that I had a problem with the lead falling off prompted a suggestion that I get a new set. I drove the hairy goat around to Autopro in Fyshwich and they slugged me $92 for a new set of leads (shit I thought - they weren't competition leads just Bosch "sport"). So, dressed in my work clothes, I proceeded to do a lead change in the car park. I got to help a young bloke who had his VZ SS ute defected because of the upper front sway bar link bushings but that's another story.

Naturally, when you change the leads, you pull the plastic engine cover off and work from the left hand side. The coils are there and the short leads start from there. Got the 3 new left leads on and move to the right. SHIT, SHIT, SHIT - the turkeys at the AE had knocked off the lead from the #2 injector while pulling out the old alternator. Putting the engine cover on hides this that explained the hairy goat running. I'd also just put the new leads on so I couldn't really take them back either.

Back to the AE and told them - their answer was "It must have been loose" - didn't no what else I could do? Ask them for the cost of the leads? They would have had a good laugh at that so off I went. The AE advised me that the battery was low so head back to work with nothing running that I didn't need so I turned the Aircon and Radio off.

Got back to the carpark and as I was getting out of the car I thought I heard a fan still running in the car. As I was still nervous about the state of charge in the battery, I had a look around and despite the key being out, the bloody heater fan was still running - shit - now what! Had a play with turning the car on and off, changing the climate control settings, nothing would stop it. It was only running very slowly and the only reason I heard it was that I had the radio and supposedly the aircon turned off!

Turns out that the whole sorry story was caused by a soft driver transistor in the Fan Amp. I had to hunt around but in the end I needed to pull the green fusible link out to stop the fan. Did this for a couple of mornings until I could BUY (NOT FIX this time) a NEW fan amp from Holden. Cost me $121 but surprise, surprise - fan doesn't run all the time.

Drove home and visited Scott's (spare parts) and apologised, I offered to pay for the battery I had received but they said "Finally managed to get you old one back in the green (on the hydrometer)" and I swapped the new one (used for 5 days) back for the old one - they didn't charge me! Thank you Scotts!

In the end, the whole exercise cost close to $700 and I learnt a heap of lessons....

- Don't assume that doing it the cheap way is the cheap way
- The guys at the spare parts shop are not always idiots and a long term trading relationship is worth it (I have been buying stuff from Scotts for 20 years).
- Not all tradesmen are really good at what they do AND try to avoid getting the apprentice who cracks tight bolts by doubling his spanners (rather than getting a ratchet and socket) to do any work.
- Some days are just shitty, no matter what you do.
- Most importantly, ASSUMPTION is the MOTHER of all ****-UPS!

BTW - the new Fan Amplifiers are COMPLETELY different from the old ones (Heatsinks, design etc) . If anyone wants 2 spare transistors to fix their old style FA - I bought 2 extras, they were $4 each - just send me a PM and you can have them for the postage cost.

[GenReaper]

Lengthy essay, Props for that but i have a question...

Do you have any hair left after that ?

[Harrison]

wow what a shitstorm... im guessing your looking at new cars now? haha

[vn_v6]

hahah damn, that why you check leads before you buy new ones haha doubt u will do it again hahah

[BottFodder]

hahah damn, that why you check leads before you buy new ones haha doubt u will do it again hahah

No tools in Canberra, all my stuff 300 KM away, already had a (small) problem with leads, didn't know about the injector lead so the leads were a fair bet. I also had to get back to work and as I wasn't going to get any more help from the Auto Elect... it seemed the right thing at the time. As GenReaper said about hair..... I was getting pretty stressed about it.

[Chrisvyss]

Some days just suck dont they