SuperSpec

SuperSpec

Monday 5 June 2023

Electrical Problems

 

I've been suffering with electrical problems recently. On occasions she would be totally dead and not reacting to anything. That was reasonably easy to track down as recycling the battery isolation switch would fix the problem. I fixed that isolation switch about 8 years ago and I suspect corrosion had set in. It's a sealed unit so I can't clean it, so I have temporarily bypassed it until I get a new one.

The second problem was more worrying. It started with the occasional beep when I went over a bump in the road, which I thought was the indicator buzzer until I noticed that my GPS Speedo was rebooting after a power interruption. Then it got more frequent and the engine started to misfire at the same time. Finally, on Saturday the car was almost undriveable with the a constant misfire along with the beeps every few seconds and I noticed the voltmeter was oscillating as well.
 
Now, we know that intermittent electricical faults are a nightmare to track down so I wasn't looking forward to it. I decided to be logical and first looked at a power distribution panel that fed both the Speedo and the Voltmeter. There were 6 spade terminals on it so I wiggled each of them and suddenly one of them fell off in my hands. I pushed it back on and suddenly she was running perfectly with no sign of beeps or misfires.
 
I breathed a sigh of relief 🙂