We left Saturday morning to pick up a few rescue dogs down in Wisconsin, but not far from home base, the Dynon EMS says we are undervolt. Odd - no alt failure light on the dash.....Hmm
OK Rtn to Anoka. Bernie was on my wing in his 7A with Kate, and he says we can use the Bonanza for the trip - and a good one it was. Pics here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/trackker.ant/PnP5000#
You won't find a better friend, RV or otherwise than Bernie!
Back on the ground, I pull the cowl and bingo!, the solder lug on the B terminal is cracked. Easy fix I think - I installed a new connector, checked the other wires and pull it out for a test run. No joy. Hmmm.
OK, (I think) the main wire broke and it dumped the alt load and trashed the regulator. That must be it. I pull the alt, grab the lifetime warranty receipt and Head to Oreilly Auto. They put it on the tester and it is fine - maybe a tad weak (13.8) so they handed over a rebuilt, same as a mine, only cleaner and with lots less hours on it......Hmmmm. I was only seeing 12V so this is not the whole answer.
Back at the hangar. I pop on the new alternator, and I check both the B-lead breaker and the field breaker. They are fine. Hmmmmm.
I check and have 12V to the field wire in the cockpit....Hmmmmmm.
I check for 12 V on the field wire at the connector. Nothing. Ah-Ha! (alt needs 12V on the field wire to produce juice). I did have 12V about 12 inches up stream where I spliced the Vans ND connector into the plane wiring. I cut the connector out and found the field wire broken just sort of the alt connector. The insulation looked fine, but the copper was completely broken. The wire quality on the Vans ND connector was not the best..... Now it makes sense the ALt failure light did not work, you need 12V on the field wire for that to work!
I rebuilt the connector using aircraft wire and terminals and potted the backside to provide better strain relief. The original connector went 550 hrs, maybe this one will go 1000.
Bernie helped me install the new connector this morning and all is well with the world.
I'm sure many of you would have figured this out much quicker - but I wanted to document in case it might save someone a few hours. To be honest it was kind of a fun puzzle and now I know that part of the plane is in better shape.
Side note O'reilly has all your receipts online, so if you are on the road and need a replacement alt - they can look it up for you and have one sent - not a bad deal!
Alternator Failure...Sort of
Linear Mode
