Hello All,
This one might be a little long. I'm a few months in the process of getting my 49 commander on the road and have been experiencing some interesting phenomena with the electrical system.
The car is still running on 6v and has a 1month +/- old battery, all the lights work and have tested the generator and get a consistent voltage increase when running the engine faster than idle.
Here's the problem. After a few days of city driving the battery is so low on charge it is very had to get the engine to turn over fast enough to start. With just the right choke and taps on the accelerator i can get it to go but end up bringing in the battery to charge overnight on the trickle. Then a few days later the same happens again.
My question is, am I asking too much of the generator in the city? I know on some of these systems you need to run a good 15-20 mins highway to get the charge up. Is there a rule of thumb to follow per start for how long it will take to re-generate the electricity that has been used?
The 2nd thing which is kind of odd has been the fuel system. Currently the mechanical fuel pump has been bypassed and a 6v electrical one is wired to the ignition. I have been having issues with these electrical fuel pumps going out and have installed a new mechanical one but when looking at the lever I thought it looked a little small in comparison to the original one. After install and filling the lines-bowl-and carb via the electrical pump, i fired up the car and the new pump didn't send any new fuel to the carb (car died once the carb bowl was spent). I also noticed that the new pump didn't have the vacuum unit on the bottom of the unit like the original one did. (I did test the pump out of car with fuel to make sure it was moving fuel and it worked great)
In this case I'm assuming I got the wrong pump and am wondering where I can source one with the bigger lever? I would rebuild the original one but someone had drilled in new larger holes for trough-bolts and that seems like that could be a problem in the future (damage the diaphragm). Also is that common to have a vacuum unit on the base of these pumps?
Any thoughts would be appreciated, thank you!
This one might be a little long. I'm a few months in the process of getting my 49 commander on the road and have been experiencing some interesting phenomena with the electrical system.
The car is still running on 6v and has a 1month +/- old battery, all the lights work and have tested the generator and get a consistent voltage increase when running the engine faster than idle.
Here's the problem. After a few days of city driving the battery is so low on charge it is very had to get the engine to turn over fast enough to start. With just the right choke and taps on the accelerator i can get it to go but end up bringing in the battery to charge overnight on the trickle. Then a few days later the same happens again.
My question is, am I asking too much of the generator in the city? I know on some of these systems you need to run a good 15-20 mins highway to get the charge up. Is there a rule of thumb to follow per start for how long it will take to re-generate the electricity that has been used?
The 2nd thing which is kind of odd has been the fuel system. Currently the mechanical fuel pump has been bypassed and a 6v electrical one is wired to the ignition. I have been having issues with these electrical fuel pumps going out and have installed a new mechanical one but when looking at the lever I thought it looked a little small in comparison to the original one. After install and filling the lines-bowl-and carb via the electrical pump, i fired up the car and the new pump didn't send any new fuel to the carb (car died once the carb bowl was spent). I also noticed that the new pump didn't have the vacuum unit on the bottom of the unit like the original one did. (I did test the pump out of car with fuel to make sure it was moving fuel and it worked great)
In this case I'm assuming I got the wrong pump and am wondering where I can source one with the bigger lever? I would rebuild the original one but someone had drilled in new larger holes for trough-bolts and that seems like that could be a problem in the future (damage the diaphragm). Also is that common to have a vacuum unit on the base of these pumps?
Any thoughts would be appreciated, thank you!
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