Now the PV has bright lights!
I recently drove it 1450 miles down to Mountain Meet 2017 and back. Which was a blast, but the charging system acted up.
The previous owner had bodged in some ancient Dodge alternator, with some iffy wiring, running through a cheap ammeter. About 16 or 17 years ago I swapped the tired old B18 for a B20E from a 145E, and along with that came the 145's French Marchal alternator (Volvo used both Marchal and Bosch, with the latter being far more common). Since then, it's always sort of worked, just not great. But not bad enough to really get me to mess with it.
Well, at one point the cheap ammeter *caught fire* at an intersection, which was entertaining. Just sitting there, waiting for a green light, when a faint whiff of hot insulation was followed by huge amounts of burning insulation smoke. I opened the hood, hopped out, and yanked off one of the battery cables. Then had to push the dead still smoking car through the intersection and into a parking lot. After a little tinkering I realized the ammeter had shorted internally - took the wires off it and stuck them together, car was alive again.
The whole car has always seemed a bit starved for volts. The headlights were yellowish. You could hear the fuel pump slowing down when the turnsignals were on. Everything would dim when the heater fan was on, or the brake lights were on. But it all worked... well enough... for me to not bother with it too much. It usually had enough juice to start, unless it had been sitting for more than a week or two.
Anyhow, at MM it started overcharging, 17, 18 volts on the meter. I tried unplugging the field wire off the alternator but it kept on doing it. Some sort of internal fault. So I just turned on everything electrical 9which isn't much in a PV) and started off on the 10 hour drive back home. After a few hours of 17 volts, it dropped to 12.5, the alternator had failed. So I turned everything off again and kept on driving, watching the volt meter slowly dropping. Before it got too low, I went to a Wal Mart and got a cheap full sized battery. And kept on driving as the cute little PC680 discharged. When it got down to about 8 volts, the car was still running fine, but the tachometer was starting to drop. I pulled over and swapped the batteries, and the full sized had no issues getting me the rest of the 4 hours home. Only dropped from 12.5 to 12.2-ish.
Ron Kwas/Swedish Embassy sells a bracket that mounts a 10/12SI style alternator on, I got one of those and a $55 (new, shipped) alternator from eBay. And then I replaced a bunch of cracked wiring, ancient crimped fittings (some from the P.O., some from me). And replaced the battery cable. And redid the flaky wiring where it used to run all the current through the ammeter, but the ammeter was replaced by a voltmeter after it caught fire, so all the current feeding into the car went through 3 feet of wiring for no real reason anymore.
Finished it up last night, and even before I started it I noticed all the lights were a lot brighter. Apparently, a lot of resistance in that old flaky wiring running all over the place. Started it up and voila - 14.5 rock solid volts on the meter, bright lights, yee hah.
Alls well until the $55 Chinesium alternator craps out. Heh.