Today was the day I finally solved the niggling problem of Herman’s alternator. The astute reader will remember that it has been giving me gyp since I first bought the van and I’ve made at least two abortive attempts to sort it out before [exhibit A, exhibit B].

Having a split charge system and hence a spare battery has ameliorated the problem somewhat, in that I’ve got into the habit of swapping the batteries round every couple of weeks and charging up the one I’ve just taken off the ignition circuit, but it’s a pain in the arse carrying a heavy duty battery up two flights of stairs, every time I need to put it on the charger in the flat.

So today, I vowed to have another go:

First off, I swapped the brushes in the alternator, which did sweet FA. Then I traced every bloody lead coming out of the damn thing as they weaved and meandered around Herman’s nice oily engine bay. I removed various of these leads in turn and bypassed them temporarily with lengths of known-good wiring. No matter what I tried, the alternator stubbornly refused to output more than a feeble 6 or 7 volts. 

wish me luck, skip. I’m going in!

Eventually, after about an hour of cursing, swearing and generally having a whale of a time, I happened to trace the lead back from the battery to the starter motor and found that the connector on the starter motor end was so loose, I could undo the nut by hand.

The culprit!

After a good wire-brushing

I undid the nut, whipped off the connector, which was covered in oil and gunk and gave it a brisk rub down with a wire brush, then reconnected it good and tight and fired up the engine…

Halle-fuckin’-leujah! Turns out, the problem had nothing to do with the alternator at all, but was down do a dodgy connection between starter motor and battery. Dontcha just love auto-electrics?

At least with electrical jobs, you dinnae have to get your hands dirty!

Trying to elicit some sympathy from the cat

i noticed someone was breaking an LT on ebay,  so i emailed him to see if he still had the alternator.  he did, so i snaffled it for £30 and then, when it arrived, spent the most infuriating afternoon i’ve had in a long time, removing the old one and fitting the new one.

now i’ve worked on many a motor in my time and done many a job that had me wanting to headbutt brick walls in sheer frustration.  but never in recent memory have i come across a job so absolutely cuntish as changing the alternator on a VW LT35.  every single fucking bolt seemed to have been deliberately placed so that it was as mindfuckingly inaccessible as it was possible to get it.  i honestly spent about three or four hours swapping that bastard alternator over - a job that involves undoing three bolts and a couple of cable connectors.  it would literally take less than ten minutes, if you could get at it easily.


new alternator on the right. old one on the left.  the old one actually looks in better nick!

you already know what the punchline is going to be, don’t you?

after spending all that time,  cursing, swearing, grazing my knuckles and shortening my life by about three weeks with the stress of it all, i got the alternators swopped over and fired up herman….  and the bastard charging light started glowing again.

this one could run and run! - next thing to try will be to trace every damned wire coming off the thing and see if i can find a dodgy connection, or a  short anywhere.

[jeebus! - that’s the worst one yet!]

with the long nights drawing in,  i found myself driving herman in the dark a few days back, on the way back from mazza’s mum & dad’s.  i noticed that his charge warning light was glowing very faintly and slightly less faintly, when i had to put my headlights on.

so today, working on the tried & trusted ‘try the cheapest remedy first’ approach, i thought it was time to fit a new alternator belt and see if that helped things along. unfortunately this would involve patronising that den of uselessness known as halfords.

needless to say, they didnae have anything listed in any of their parts catalogues for an LT, but - knowing them of old - i had taken the precaution of getting under herman with a tape measure before setting off and measuring the existing belt’s vital statistics.   so i was able to find a belt of suitable dimensions.  it did take a while tho’, as i had to stand there for about twenty mins, plucking likely candidates off the shelf, taking them out of their cardboard sleeves and measuring them, then sticking them back in their sleeves again - until i found the right one.

you willnae find it listed under VW LT, in the parts catalogue, but this belt was the closest i could find to the size of the one that was already fitted:

when i got home and took the old belt off, i was glad i’d decided to replace it, even if it turned out not to be the cause of the warning light - as it was on its last legs;  cracked and crumbling and fraying along the edges.



the old belt.  t’was probably about to fall to bits anyway


fitting new drive belts is always a ball-ache of a job at the best of times and this was no exception.  the pain was slightly ameliorated tho’ by the cunning use of a set of cogs; one on the alternator holding bolt and another on the bracket.  this allowed you to ‘wind’ the alternator out along the bracket until you got the required tension, just by turning the head of the bolt.  a nice bit of simple german ingenuity there.  on all the previous motors i’ve owned it’s been the old ‘try and brace the alternator with a screwdriver wedged between it and the engine block, with one hand, while simultaneously trying to do up the holding bolts with the other’ dance.

german ingenuity - taking a wee bit of the pain out of drive-belt fitting.


with the new drive belt in place, i was feeling confident that this would sort the problem [especially after seeing the state of the old belt]. but when i climbed in and fired up the engine, i could just make out that old warning light, still glowing gently and mockingly at me.


new alternator drive belt fitted


o well - further investigation on that one is another job for another day.