• Hi Guest!
    If you appreciate British Car Forum and our 25 years of supporting British car enthusiasts with technical and anicdotal information, collected from our thousands of great members, please support us with a low-cost subscription. You can become a supporting member for less than the dues of most car clubs.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Dynamo to alternator conversion

Share this page

Jeepster

Jeepster

Jedi Trainee
Country flag
Offline
I am having trouble getting my BJ8 to charge. I now have the dynamo generating but still no charge to the battery. I have cleaned up the contacts on the regulator but no luck. The ignition light does go off after a few seconds of start up.

I did consider buying a new regulator but would still have to set it up.

What is required to do an alternator conversion? CAn I only do this if the car is converted to negative earth?
 
What is required to do an alternator conversion?

Google" Generator to alternator conversion.

Select the first entry that appears on the page.

-----------------------------OR
Google MGAgaru.com



CAn I only do this if the car is converted to negative earth

No there are a limited number of POS earth alternators available for you to use.
 
Check out Hendrix Wire Wheels web site. Allen has a great kit with everything but the alternator. I went through the same pain of trying to make my generator and regulator work. I put the kit on my BJ8 and think it is one of the best things I have done to my Healey for reliability.
I did take the guts out of my regulator, which is one of the options for grounding, and it is the common point for several wires. It just sits there looking correct, but is connected to the alternator.
Yes, my car is negative ground now.
Charlie
 
I was in your situation recently and decided to install an alternator due to the additional electrical demands of a radio, radiator cooling fan, cold air vent fan and future placement of driving / fog lamps. Since I chose to not place Chevy parts on my Healey I purchased the alternator coversion kit from AH Spares in the UK. So far so good.
Car was already negative ground.
 
I'd suggest you change to negative earth at the same time. It is an easy job and you will find that negative earth alternators are much more easily available and alot less expensive. Another advantage is anything you fit later, GPS, Radio, CD etc is straight off the shelf. Google conversion to negative earth, the only thing I had to change on my BJ8 was to swop two wires in the rev counter and reverse the coil wire on the back of it. The whole job took a lot less than an hour.

Ian
 
I make that change last year. It's very important also to buy the ALTERNATOR MOUNTING BRACKET specifique, i bought it in AH spares - not forget to buy also the joint, I did - so the original mounting can be broken so it doens't work equal and the consequences can be dramatiques....
 
Did you do the test for the dynamo in the shop manual?
 
Hi Jeepster

Wiring an alternator into a BJ8 is relatively easy but is dependant upon your selection of alternator for mount or hook-up. As I am not completely aware of the most common alternators available in the UK, I would suggest you consider a 2 or 3 wire units with output in the range of 50 amps to 100 amps as this will provide more than enough power for anything you have installed or plan for the future.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&p...cy&hl=en_US

The link above will take you to an article I wrote for our club news letter. It describes the easy assembly of a very low cost (relative to those available on the market) mount utilizing the original generator mounting plate along with the wiring hook-up. Let me know if you have any questions.

Ray
RAC68 (64BJ8P1)
 
Back
Top