Lucas, the Prince of Darkness

[MGTF1250Dave]

Aloha All,

Last week, going home from work an infrequent rain fall called for the windscreen wipers. It wasn't heavy, no need to put the top up, but the wipers won't work. Fortunately, the TF has wiper parking knobs in the dash, so I could manually move the wiper blades to clear the windsheild. Over the weekend, I worked on fixing the wipers. I checked the connections, switch and power to the motor and all was fine, so I pulled the motor to check it. The grease in the drive mechanism was dried out and caked and the brushes and commutator of the motor were grimmy. I cleaned the motor, regreased the drive and now everything works fine. This 50 year old motor now works fine and looks as good as new and I didn't have to spend abou $300 to replace it. I think I cleaned the motor about 20 years ago. I know as LBC owners, we occassionally like to pick on Lucas for inventing darkness, but many of his parts work well and can be repaired when necessary. As LBC owners, I think we reserve the right to coment on Lucas, but if you don't have a LBC you should keep quiet. This weekend I was pleased with the durability of this Lucas motor.

Safety Fast,
Dave

 

[aeronca65t]

Dave: You're absolutely correct about older LBCs...they have lots of nice brass parts, replaceable bearings and so forth...but I've noticed that newer Brit cars (especially Brit-Leyland cars) use pretty cheesey, plastic switches and connectors. I tried cleaning up the BL panel switches on my '78 Spridget, but they were so poorly built, I ended up replacing them with American toggle switches.

 

[XK4]

Although I was asked not to speak unkindly about Lucas (I currently do not own a LBC, I own a LJC instead) I must say that when I did own them I only really had problems with the wonderful

little black box which was called (among other things) the voltage regulater. They seemed to die at the slightest provocation. Oh yes, and I did rebuild several windscreen wiper motors (with dried grease, worn comuntators and arced contacts), but as was said, that didn't take too much effort.
The rest of the Lucas parts seemed to work rather well.
Jim

 

[Bruce74B]

I own a LBC with Lucas (the P of D) and have made fun of them...for example

Thursday my Chrysler was in the shop and I took Dolly the B to work. Getting it out of an air conditioned garage into a hot humid morning, the windshield fogged up and I turned on the defroster. I noticed every time I stepped on the brakes, the radio faded out...another LUCAS phantom???

On the way home in rush hour traffic, I noticed wisps of smoke coming out of the air cowling. Fighting the urge to ask the trucker in the next lane to pull over and grab a fire extinguisher because there was no place to pull over, I got off the main drag and ran like heck through my neighborhood, squeeled into the driveway next to my garage and threw open the bonnet. The heater motor (which I had tuned on that morning and never shut off, even though I closed the contols) was overheated and smoking slightly.

I will have to replace that motor (there is one on Ebay now for $10) and should solve the problem. Simple and cheap...great for LUCAS!

Oh the other hand, the reason my modern Chrysler LHS was in the shop was because the HVAC fan was stuck on high all the time...my local mechanics didn't have the faintest idea how to fix it...the dealer tells me to bring it in and have the entire "control module ASSEMBLY" replaced at a cost of about $300.

AND THIS IS PROGRESS???

Bruce

 

[SilentUnicorn]

Lucas..hmm... He and i are great buds. just about everthing is rebuildable. luv it. you have to understand it. but aint that what luv is all about? i have and currently own plenty of lucas stuff. 76 bonneville. 79 midget and a 75 midget and a 59A . so i feel if i want to speek on lucas i have earned the right. and i am sure Lucas takes it all with a grain of salt. thats what being buds means

Mark

 

[Super 7]

I currently own 4 english cars, and 6 english motorcycles, and 2 water cooled Vanagon Westfalias. I have owned a bunch of VW's in the past, mostly Westy's, but a couple Scirocco's, 16V Jetta, and a Golf convertable.

I know this:

Lucas is better than Bosch to live with.

I have no Idea why the reputations are the way they are.

[ 08-20-2003: Message edited by: Super 7 ]</p>

 

[Tom Bedenbaugh]

I can tell you it been my experence that most of the problems with Lucas wiring is the results of BubbA, and shadetrees working on it.It is a very simple and straight foward system and easy to work on.

 

[tony barnhill]

You guys didn't see the wiring harness in the MG I just bought from Tom...a beautiful VIRGIN harness that the guy whacked up in 4 or 5 places...cut in half where it can't be repaired! Whacked out the fuze block/coil/regulator...whacked off the headlight wiring harness...for no reason at all!
Luckily, i have a great harness with which to replace it!

[ 08-20-2003: Message edited by: tony barnhill ]</p>

 

[Guest]

my wife fixed the horn on ol Rusty by driving thru a 3' water puddle. Drowned the car but now the horn works

 

[Bugeye58]

I've been associated with LBC's since 1966, and can honestly say that, over the years, I have had far more problems with Delco, than I have with Lucas. Many of the problems with Lucas electrics can be attributed to bad execution, rather than bad design. Does anyone remember the way they ran the bare end of a wire through the end of a bullet connector, and merely folded the exposed wire back along the connector before snapping it in place, rather than at least crimping it, let alone solder it?
Nowadays, the plastic used in the switches on many of our cars is at least 50 years old, and has degraded, as have the springs, contacts, ec. Let me know, 50 years down the road, how well the stuff in your current daily driver has fared.
Don't get me wrong. I love all of the jokes, but think that Lucas has taken a bad rap over the years.
Guess who does the electronics on a good portion of the airliners that we take for granted when we're at 40,000 feet? One clue. It ain't Delco!
Jeff

 

[waltesefalcon]

Jeff,

My (old) daily driver was a 52 International pick-up. Drove it everyday everywhere just didn't get in a hurry. Quit using it as a daily driver when gas prices became prohibitively expensive, promting me to buy and Opel GT which was traded in for a Spitfire. But anyway with all the driving I did in that pick-up probably around 40,000 miles a year never had a single electrical problem and it had the complete original wiring harness wraped in cloth. No repairs nothing. Of course it also only had head lights, tail lights, engine harness of two wires, and aftermarket turnsignals from the late fifties. So I think delco did a pretty good job with it. Though I agree that Lucas' real problem was with execution rather than design because they really are easy to work on and the problems I find are usually exposed wires or broken plastic bits.

Cheers,

Walter

P.S. Still have and drive my pick up but only if I have to pick something up or just want to go for a nice Sunday afternoon drive.

[ 08-21-2003: Message edited by: waltesefalcon ]</p>

 

[tony barnhill]

Eaton...I'm confused...which LBC was built within the last couple of years that has those Lucas switches in it?

 

[PC]

I don’t know about the last couple of years but my 1974 Jensen Healey has Lucas switches that I was replacing EVERY couple of years. Nowadays they’re harder to find and really expensive. That’s why I got Eaton switches to replace them.


PC.

 

[PC]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> Guess who does the electronics on a good portion of the airliners that we take for granted when we're at 40,000 feet? <hr></blockquote>

Eaton.

They also made the switches I’m putting in my dashboard to replace those #$@% Lucas switches that kept disintegrating after a couple of years even though they were barely used.


PC.

https://aerospace.eaton.com/products/cockpit_controls/cockpit_controls/default.html

 

[Gary Lloyd]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Chuck Cougill:
my wife fixed the horn on ol Rusty by driving thru a 3' water puddle. Drowned the car but now the horn works

<hr></blockquote>
Dang!! I wish we could find a puddle!! In my opinion the only really bad thing with Lucas is that thet run the full power to the headlights thru the switch, other than that?????

 

[Guest]

yeah Gary but you should have heard the phone call I got at work after she pushed it out. I got her a new truck, it's taller and should be able to handle a flooded street.

 

[Gary Lloyd]

Ain't love grand!!

 

[Super 7]

Yeah, that was the same way back when I had an XJ-6. The window switches and the power door lock switch were always going out, and they were high priced. Thats what I like about the Seven. Who needs power windows and power door locks, if there are no doors and windows?

I never had switch problems on my Elans though, and there were lots of them. I have never had trouble with charging or ignition or lights on any Lucas vehicle, 2 wheels or 4, with the exception of a couple worn out ignition switches on a Norton and a Triumph motorcycle. The Lucas turn signals on Motorcycles from the 70's are horrible too. They work OK, but are hard toget to mount correctly, and way easy to snag, particularly the ones on the headlight.

Alfa owners think its normal to have instrument lights dim when you put on the brakes. It is common for the mechanical fuel injection enrichment solenoid to "talk" to the starter relay, so that the starter motor doesn't shut off when the car starts. Try to find a GTV6 or Milano where all the windows work. Electrics on those cars are unbelieveably bad, and they laugh at Lucas too. It would be a tremendous step up.

Smiths instruments? Junk, but not CHEAP junk.

Just my opinions, but based on my personal experience.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PC:
I don’t know about the last couple of years but my 1974 Jensen Healey has Lucas switches that I was replacing EVERY couple of years. Nowadays they’re harder to find and really expensive. That’s why I got Eaton switches to replace them.


PC.

<hr></blockquote>

 

[Super 7]

Whoops, pulled a double.

[ 08-28-2003: Message edited by: Super 7 ]</p>

 

[tony barnhill]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Alfa owners think its normal to have instrument lights dim when you put on the brakes.<hr></blockquote>

I once had a Lancia HPE that did that! Never could fix it!