Electrical Help............
 

Hello all - I am a new Cobra owner and new to this forum. I wanted to introduce myself and seek some advice. My name is Tuan and I live in Portland, Oregon.

Does anyone know of a shop in the Portland area that has entensive experience with Cobras and the electrical system. My Cobra has been in the shop for a month now and they can't seem to diagnose the problem. I bought the car from Florida with this existing problem unknown to me. The alternator does not seem to be charging the battery but they have tried everything and nothing seems to be working. They have replaced the alternator 2 times and isolated the alternator from the main wiring - nothing.

Help - I need my car back before summer runs out.

Thanks in advance,

Tuan

Tuan, welcome to the group! It doesn't sound like you really need a shop with extensive Cobra experience for this particular problem. You might want to take it by an Auto Zone or similar and have them hook your car up to a charging system analyzer. It sounds like you have the capability to change whatever needs to be changed you just need help tracking down the problem. Since most Cobras don't have all that different a charging system from other cars you may just be able to find the problem that way.

I recently went to my local Auto zone to see if they had a code reader to buy. They said that they did, but that they would do it free for me anyway. I had a “check engine” light on and at that point had no idea why. Turns out it was one of the o2 sensors and would cost me over $300 smackers to replace it. The guy then offers the suggestion that I might want to just pull them out, spray them with carb cleaner and reinstall them to see if it worked. He used their code reader to reset the engine light and I tried the carb cleaner trick. Damned if it didn’t work. His explanation was that there was probably just a small piece of crud in one that was causing a miss-read on the part of the computer and the carb cleaner blasted it out. The truck has run fine now for the last 3000 mi (it's what I drove to London). Needless to say that free service saved me a butt-load of cash in parts not to mention the reaming I’d have gotten if I’d taken it to the Toyota dealer. They wanted $70 just to hook the thing up to their analyzer.

I know that’s long and involved for a suggestion but it just may help.

Steve

Thanks Steve,

The car is at the local shop that specializes in Hondas and Acuras. They came highly recommended because the guy has done work on Chevys and Fords. They seem to have all the equipment to test the car's system but they don't seem to be getting to the root of the problem. From what they tell me, they don't seem to understand the wiring harness in this car and I believe that the previous owner tried unsuccessfully to fix the same problem.

Tuan

Tuan,

I am assuming by your "name" of FFR4103 you have a Factory Five Roadster. You posted this on the Backdraft section of the forum. You may have better luck in the open forum sections, or perhaps on the Factory Five site.

SkipB

Thanks Skip,

Tuan

Have you tried using a one wire alternator? Like the name suggests very easy to hook up. Not much to troubleshoot.

Does your system have a fusable link that is blown?

Underpowered (amp) alternator?

Do you have a main power disconnect? If you have some kind of draw on your electrical system this will eliminate the drain while not being used. This does not solve the problem but may help in the short term.

Tuan,

Go get your car and bring it home. We can solve your problem from here if you don't mind doing some of the work. I am sure if you have a FFR your car probably has a Painless wiring system installed in it. Go over here and give their techs a call:

http://www.painlessperformance.com/

Clois

If your shop cannot solve this problem within 4 hours they are incompetent. Get the car out and take it somewhere else. No car on the market has a more simplistic electrical system.

Bingo! My first thought as well.

Thanks all,

I will talk with the shop today and see about bringing it home.

Tuan

Tuan, Clois has very good advice.

Once home, even us CC members have been known to help a few cobra owners with a few problems.

The Painless people should be able to help.

Worse case, PM me, I might be able to help.

:D

Get your car away from the honda store.

A Factory Five Roadster is wired up the same as any hot rod. If your car is fuel injected it likely has a wirediet.com harness, thousands of wirediet harnesses have been installed and are totally reliable. If carbed it can be any quality wiring like AAW, Painless or It's a Snap.

The above can have a 1G, 2G or a 3G alternator. These alternators are all simple to wire up. If you have a red alternator light in the dash and it does not go on when the key is on, I know what the problem is.

Tell us what you have.

Roger

It seems that I can only get one image right now. I will ask someone in the office for assistance.

Thanks,

Tuan

Roger,

The alternator is a 3 wire alt. The dash doesn't have an red indicator light on it.

Tuan

Is there an AMP guage in the dash?

Do you have any technical know-how? I don't want to insult you, but it would be hard to ask you to check a few things if you haven't a clue.

:D

3 wire is OK but nothing beats the simplicity of a one wire alternator.

trularin,

I don't remember is there is an amp gauge but I am not sure the gauges are working correctly without the proper charging.

I am also pretty clueless about electrical items.

Thanks,

Tuan

The regulator has to be powered up by a 12 volt signal to 'energize'. This signal usually comes from the ignition switch and is generally wired through the 'red light' on the dash. No red lignt ON, then no power to the regulator. This step is often missed, checking for power to the regulator. A jumper wire can be rigged up to bring 12 volts to the regulator for testing, but you have to know WHICH terminal to energize to 'turn on' the regulator.

While it sounds simple, and it is, it is often not understood or overlooked by even a good mechanic.

You don't have to have a 'red light' (charging indicator). Sometimes a resistor is used in it's place, but a bad resistor or connection will result in a 'no charge' signal is given to the alternator FROM the regulator. In this case replacing the regulator and alternator and battery will NOT solve the problem. Testing each component will show them to be working well, so that won't solve the problem either!

Alternative test is to bypass the regulator, this often leads to incorrectly assuming the regulator is 'bad'.

The 3 wire alternator is probably a direct Ford replacement for the OEM unit for EFI cars. Remove the alternator, take it down to NAPA and have it checked. With my EFI FFR I went through one every eighteen months or so. Apparently quite common for cars with underdrive pulleys