Cold Start and Charge Lights

Hi folks,

I'm trying to get my Landy back on the road, and I'm currently trying to make sure all the dash controls work as expected, but I've come across a couple of problems I'm not sure about.

Currently the cold start light never seems to light up although the bulb filament has been seen to briefly glow red when the ignition key is turned.
The vehicle does start though, so it's not the glow plug circuit that's broken. Would this light not work if the big coil resistor on the bulkhead was broken ?

Also the charge light never comes on, so I'm assuming that the alternator has gone the route of Monty Python's parrot but how I can I be sure ? We've put a volt meter across the battery and got the following readings:
12.5V with nothing running and 12.9V with the engine being reved, this seems a bit low to me but I'm no expert.

thanks in advance

Simon

don't know about yer deeeesill question but yer charging should be between 13 and 15 volts. if you have a dyamo it might need higher revs than an alternator to get there. an alternator should be able to supply enough charge at tickover.
check the brushes in yer dyamo/alt. and are you sure your battery is in good nick?
judging by yer piccy i'd say that you have an alternator rather than a dyamo. but i may be wrong

slob said:

don't know about yer deeeesill question but yer charging should be between 13 and 15 volts. if you have a dyamo it might need higher revs than an alternator to get there. an alternator should be able to supply enough charge at tickover.
check the brushes in yer dyamo/alt. and are you sure your battery is in good nick?
judging by yer piccy i'd say that you have an alternator rather than a dyamo. but i may be wrong

Click to expand...

thanks Slob,

Yep it's an alternator, IIRC that was one of the features of the Series 3, but I'll take a look inside and see what the brushes are like.

The battery is a new one, so it should be fine, that was one of the first things I replaced, the old one just wouldn't take a charge).