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Electrical upgrade

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Bear with me here.
So a full service the other day which included draining and refill of the cooling system. This has led to another airlock which I will fix with a new water pump, temperature switch and replacing the thermostat. However driving it home in traffic the only way to keep it cool was windows open and heater on full blast - not ideal but got me home.

Now to the electrical. It was dark so the lights were on and fan on full blast. The gauge was reading about 8v with the fan full blast 11v just the lights and just over 12v with nothing on at all

See picture below showing the alternator you will see it looks ok shape but who knows. Battery is less than a year old so that is good.

So where to start. My instinct is telling me get a new alternator and maybe see if there is a more uprated version to add some much needed boost to the electrics but will I simply end up cooling something else with that.

Your thoughts and experience welcome. I will then tackle the electrics ready for the spring time as will be dong the cooling pump first.




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Electrical upgrade

Killing something else - not cooling. Every post iPhone get me I hate autocorrect


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With regards to the voltage reading on the VDO gauge, depending on where you wired it in you may be getting inaccurate readings. I wired mine in to an ignition feed on the back of the fusebox and when driving in the night with the fan blowing on 1 it normally reads about 10-11 volts but I've never had a flat battery. The best way to check would be to connect a volt meter to the batery terminals and see what reading you've got compared to the VDO volt meter. Also see what you've got without the engine running (about 13v) and then with the engine running (about 14v). You may find that the VDO is reading a couple of volts down. The VDO is only going to read the voltage at it's own connections so if you have some volt drop then the VDO will read low and not tell you the actual voltage of the battery.
With regard to the alternator, fitting a heavier duty one won't fry anything but it will probably be pointless as the car will use a certain amp/hour when running in normal conditions and the correct alternator for the car will cope with this.
I wouldn't buy a new alternator until I was sure the old one wasn't working correctly.
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