Date:         Wed, 27 Feb 2002 09:41:38 -0500
Reply-To:     "G. Matthew Bulley" <gmbulley@BULLEY-HEWLETT.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         "G. Matthew Bulley" <gmbulley@BULLEY-HEWLETT.COM>
Organization: Bulley-Hewlett
Subject:      Help--Non-vanagon charging question
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Our 1985 Jetta TD is doing something funky, at a time when I have to get
Sue to the airport tomorrow (3 hour round trip).

The alternator light is *partially* on, with or without a load on the
alternator, and the dash gauges are showing ‘lower’ in their arc than
normal (below the LED at operating temp, ¼ tank of fuel when I know
there is ½ a tank).  The LED is just barely glowing… not enough to be
visible in the day.

My first thought was brushes on the alternator. I pulled the Bosch
brushes which have about 30k on them, and appeared fine, replaced them
with some POS Steward-Warner brushes I had thrown in my toolbox, but
that (I recall worked fine). With these in place the alternator light
glowed fully. So I replaced the Bosch brushes and charged the battery
(the ammeter on the charger indicated the battery was very low).

All of the connections are solid, I don’t own a multi-meter, and the
alternator was rebuilt about 30k ago. Should I look for new brushes,
look for a new alternator, or post this to the diesel VW list?

Developing business and guiding change since 1996,

G. Matthew Bulley 
Bulley-Hewlett
Corporate Communications 
Business: www.bulley-hewlett.com <http://bulley-hewlett.com/>    
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