So my mission of the day: fix the car (again). It’s probably either the voltage regulator or (worse) the generator itself. Maybe both. My friend and fellow Brougham driver Ken Long, of Dallas, kindly researched the best electrical shops in town. Auto Electrical Systems, Inc. said they could take me at 8 am on Tuesday morning, so I headed over here to service the car.
I spent Tuesday in the waiting room. There are a few posters. One of a girl I would have found attractive in the 8th grade: blonde, tall, wearing giant “CHIPS” sunglasses and huge boots. She’s dressed like a cop and is driving a Lamborghini patrol car painted black and white. She’s writing up a ticket for a Don Johnson-looking fellow who is leaning up on his modified 1931 Model A equipped with racing slicks and a big-haired girlfriend in a tube top. He looks dejected. Still, they’re in the desert in a front of a Speed Limit 55 sign. The poster caption reads, “I Can’t Drive 55.” This kind of marketing changed America and upped our speed limit to 70 or 75 in places. Hmm. I need to do a poster of a big-haired girl pumping ethanol into my classic car or a scantily-clad gal kicking a Prius.
Our mechanic for the day is a grumpy fellow. He little interest in my history of what went wrong with the car. After an hour, I finally broke down and went over to check up on him. For the most part, I try to stay out of the expert’s way. I realize an owner who thinks he knows the problem is probably annoying. But when I got over to his stall, Mr. Grumpy was looking at a 1960 Cadillac shop manual wiring diagram. Ugh.
I kept cool. “Would a correct wiring diagram for the car help you, sir?” I asked calmly. He grumbled. I got the book. I opened it to the wiring diagram. I waited. After about 2 minutes I said, “That diagram you’ve got there isn’t going to help you. The two cars are nothing alike.” There was probably an edge to my voice. I was tired and frustrated. The problem with having a breakdown on the road is that you have to re-explain history. If I were in Birmingham, I could just say, “Nope, that last thing you did hasn’t cured it.”
But to be fair, my road trip woes aren’t Mr. Grumpy’s fault. So I continued, “Would you like to know what we’ve replaced so far?”
“Not really,” he said beneath his breath. “I can see that.”
Okay. Time for a new shop. I went back to the waiting room and was about to tell the manager that I was headed for greener pastures. “I see you talked to Mr. Personality,” the manager said, “Don’t worry. He acts that way but he understands these cars and is the best in the business. Give him some time. When you leave here, the car will be right.”
Hmm. I debated. I guess what I need is electrical talent, not a service-station politician. My brilliant sister Lauren made a good point: if the manager knows Grumpy is difficult, they must keep him around for reasons other than his winning customer management skills. So I sat back down and waited. Another hour passed. I read a magazine. I updated the blog. I made some calls. I read a “FOR SALE: 2008 Smart Car Passion Coupe” ad (only $15,500 for a car the size of my loafer). I finally couldn’t help myself and went back out to see the surliest dwarf in Snow White’s retinue. Yet this time, Grumpy was more upbeat, “I’d drawn my own diagram using that one you gave me.”
Sure enough, Grumpy did have a diagram for the generator, drawn in blue ballpoint pen. “You’re missing a wire,” he said. My internal dialogue: Well, that’s it right there! I’m missing a wire! Clearly that’s my whole problem. A missing wire. Why didn’t I think of that? Get me some wire and I’ll be on my merry way. Better still, get me a coat hanger and I’ll make do with that. Or no, wait, why don’t I just stand in puddle and hold the two terminals where the wire is missing? Instead, I said, “Okay, which wire.”
I was missing a wire–brown one that ran from my generator to my automatic starter solenoid. Hmm. Could this possibly be what ailed me? I thought not. But since Grumpy seemed more personable, I helped him trace the brown wire on the diagram. After five minutes, I figured I’d stayed my welcome and went back to the waiting room. Another hour passed. I asked the manager if he had Wifi. He laughed and snorted no.
My sister Lauren came and picked me up to go to lunch. I had a beer to settle my nerves. This shop charged $85 an hour, and while that was cheaper than the last electrical shop, it didn’t seem they were as swift at finding the source of my trouble. I scarfed down everything in sight at Uncle Julio’s here in Dallas. At 3 pm I returned to the shop. The manager, Steve, said, “Well, it’s either a bad generator or a bad voltage regulator.”
Given this is exactly the information I had told Steve when I arrived this morning at the shop, my reaction was less than enthusiastic. Internal dialogue: I’m paying them $85 an hour for this? External dialogue: What do I owe you for this diagnosis? I was about to go buy five batteries and keep going on my journey.
Thankfully, at this point, the shop owner, Jeff Andonia, came by and introduced himself. He had 1,000 watt personality and really knew cars. He immediately put me at ease by asking, “You don’t owe us anything for that diagnosis. Our diagnosis charge is $85, total. Say, that looks like a truck generator for an old Freightliner on this car. Is that OEM?” (Indeed the Brougham did share its generator and regulator with many fire trucks, road graders, and heavy-duty trucks such as Diamond T, Oshkosh, and Reo.). He knows his stuff.
My sister Lauren watched Jeff carefully and concluded that yes, he was an honest guy. Jeff’s also the city councilman from Carrollton, so we left the Brougham overnight with the hope that the guys at ACS could fix it.
In the meantime, some of my Cadillac friends suggested that the polarity on the generator may not have been set correctly. They said that, according to the Cadillac manual, the polarity of the generator must be set on the car. I called Schelene Gray Electric and they’d set the polarity on the bench. Uh-oh. For more information on how this possibly could have caused the burnout, read about polarizing a generator here.
http://web.utk.edu/~tprather/FoothillsTractorClub/TechTips/PolarizeGenerator.html
Schelene insisted, up and down, that polarity would not change from the bench to the car. The Cadillac manual, the 1958 GM service guide, and every other electrical expert I talked with about polarity contradicted Schelene. One old timer simply snorted, “Ask them how they set it on the bench. I’d like to know.” Another laughed out loud and said setting the polarity on the car was the most fundamental given of working on a generator/voltage regulator system. Oh great.
On Wednesday, the shop removed the generator and reported that they found a lot of wear on the armature, and that the brush spring and leads were burnt. Not good.
Now, on to the voltage regulator. What was it’s deal? In fact, what is a voltage regulator? I’ve learned a lot about a generator system on this trip. A voltage regulator is a like a dam. It holds back the raging river of the generator. I have a 55 amp generator and should have a 55 amp voltage regulator. But what happens if you put a 45 amp regulator with a 55 amp generator?
I’d assumed the whole system would go berserk and burn itself up. Not so, says Dave Soltow of Yesteryear Antique Auto Parts of Port Charlotte, Florida (941) 743-7784, “If you have a double contact voltage regulator and the correct double-field yellow leads off your generator, you should have no problems,” he said.
Why? In my case, for much of the trip, I was running with a 55 amp generator and a 45 amp voltage regulator. Had I turned on the lights, AC, fan, power seats, radio, fuel pump, brake lights, and started running the windows up and down, maybe I would be in a situation where my electrical demands totaled 46 amps. What would happen?
I’d drain down the battery by 1 amp. That in itself, would not fry the generator. For the generator to destroy itself, I’d need to be in some sort of situation where the voltage regulator called for 55 or more amps for an extended period of time. Or, perhaps, the generator had a dead short–one of the brush holders might have an open, causing it to run full out at 55 amps.
The mystery is that a generator running full out should have showed up in our voltage tests or on the car’s gauge. So what caused the generator to spike? A short in the system? Is there a vampire wire sucking all the juice without it showing on the gauge? Was the generator simply poorly rebuilt? Or it could be poor grounds, dirty grounds, or missing grounds. Maybe the Brougham’s wiring has a simple short somewhere? Entirely possible. I have about 200 miles of wire to trace in the car, so that eventuality is scary.
I am a man in need of a solution, and it seems that many are possible.
On the Road Again:
Trying not to interfere, I stayed away from the shop for the next two days. Instead, I caught up on work and enjoyed the company of my sister Lauren, her husband Scott, and my little nephew.
If I didn’t have a 5,000-pound paperweight weighing on my cerebral cortex, I’d have found the whole experience very relaxing.
Instead, I worried about the car. So many variables. Yet Auto Electric Services and Jeff did their best to fix the car. They searched for parts. They fixed poor connections. The tweaked other wiring issues. They also installed a new voltage regulator and rebuilt generator. Finally, they called to say I was all clear and ready to go.
So I ventured over to the shop, said goodbye to everyone (including Mr. Grumpy–who is actually pretty friendly once he decides to like you), and got in the car to go. It started right up.
Then died.
Oh brother. Grumpy quickly diagnosed the coil as the problem and replaced it with the spare I had in the trunk. I started the car, it rumbled to life. We’re good! So I said my goodbyes again. Bye!
Then the car died.
This time, I found the problem: the fuel pump wire was disconnected. Ha! No problem. I reconnected the wire, went in to start the car, chuckling to myself. Bye everybody!
The Brougham blew a geyser of gas everywhere. Stuck needle seat. Argh!
Grumpy, a.k.a. Terry, cleaned up the gas, banged on the carbs (hit it with a hammer!) and then started the car. It fired up right away and kept running. Whew. Finally. Ok, time to go.
My dash lights were out.
Two more hours were spent figuring out why the dash lights went kaput. One problem was a blown fuse. But the low fuel and temp lights no longer illuminate at startup. I can live with that, but it is depressing. Especially when you’ve sweated a litre of water in 100-degree heat trying to remove and reinstall the instrument panel.
But we had the critical lights. “Terry, I’m getting the hell outta here before something else breaks,” I said. Terry laughed. “Thanks guy,” he said.
I got in the car. Started it. Put it in reverse. Drove away from the shop and across the street to get gas. Whew–I’d made it. Bye, everybody!
As I was pumping, Terry pulled up, “You don’t have any brake lights.” I briefly considered hosing the car down with premium and putting it out of its misery with a match. But jail time sounded less appealing that going to Vegas, so I opted to be patient.
After five minutes, Terry had fixed the brake lights. Now that’s kind–it was after shop hours. He really turned out to be an excellent tech, and cares enough about his work not to let a guy drive off into the sunset with non-functioning brake lights.
The generator functioned properly and all systems were a go–by 2 am, I’d made Amarillo, Texas.