My alternator packed up on the first day of it being on the road, 150 miles after the MOT. Battery light came on whilst i was driving, so i headed back towards home. It died on me 1/4 mile from home, Fortunately I got towed back home from one of the locals. Not what i expected to break down on the first drive, the alternator is one of very few parts that i hadn't replaced, typical. I jump started the car and it would only run whilst connected to the third party source, after a little charge it ran for a very short while. Battery voltage was 11-12v, not 13-14 as expected. I removed the alternator and had a look inside, It's the early V belt type. It seemed that corrosion was the cause of failure. Some of the copper windings had broken off the terminals inside the alternator, It generally looked old and worn out, so it needed replacing.
I have a friend who lives down the road who has a C20LET Astra GSi, so i thought to ask if i could borrow his alternator for a short while as the car is off the road. I found that it had the later alternator with the ribbed pulley. I took it off anyway to see if i could swap the pulleys over, but the mounting brackets were completely different so it wouldn't fit, i had a gut feeling it wouldn't.
Anyway, i bought a reconditioned alternator from E-Bay for £50, delivered next day. Sorted
I recently put 99 Octane fuel in the car to see how it would run because the engine often splutters and kind of miss-fires between gear changes and going back on the throttle after a period of coasting. It's quite annoying actually, it's been getting worse recently, I'm not entirely sure if it ties in with when the 99 octane fuel was put in. I felt no difference in the 99 octane to be honest , though i will say that the exhaust note sounded better at certain RPM's. I changed the spark plugs to see if it would cure the spluttering between gear changes, but that didn't change anything, still the same after new plugs. I'm yet to look deeper into what's causing this spluttering, most parts on the engine have been replaced other than coil and leads. The engine has recently been idling very high on start up, when i say high, i mean over 3 thou!! I dare try and drive it when its cold because it misfires so badly. I have to let the engine get up to temperature before i can drive it, As soon as it warms up, the idle suddenly drops down to normal and it runs fine, I'm not sure if it's over-fueling on start up, or if there's something else going on to cause the high idle, but as I said, soon as it warms up, it's perfectly ok... other than the spluttering between gears. I'm beginning to suspect the coolant temp sensor is playing up. No ECU fault codes from flashing them.
Here's the old plugs NGK-R BCPR7E, According to Vauxhall's spark plug guide in the Haynes manual, they indicate that they are overheating. Vauxhall suggests this may be ignition timing off, fuel mixture too low, or fuel Octane (Too low).... Well i can rule that one out as its been running 99 octane.
Here are the new Bosch super spark FR7DC+8. Fitted these last week and they made no noticeable difference. Had them out of the engine after doing 50 miles or so and they looked to be in the same condition as the older ones. Though, i must say that they were slightly sootier that the old ones which indicates a rich fuel mixture. Well it has defiantly been running rich on cold start up recently, so i wonder what's causing this, It literally happened over night. I forgot to mention that it wouldn't start one evening, engine just turned over and over with very poor effort trying to fire, ran the battery flat. Then on the following morning, it fired on the first turn, but idled very high. As mentioned, the only thing that's changed is the type of fuel, I ran 99 octane for about 300 miles. I've gone back to normal 95 octane now, but it'll take another top-up of 95 for the tank to flush out any remaining 99. I'll see how it runs this week on the normal petrol and I'll look at things that are likely to cause this spluttering and misfire between gear changes. Has anyone experienced similar symptoms ?
I checked it in the other cars and in most of them there's a little fender play but not as much as in astras.
