Have finally got my blade engine running on all cylinders today.
But I have a couple of issues:-
Firstly, I let the engine idle for a good 5 or 10 mins or so to get her nice and hot to make sure cooling fan works etc. (which it did) However, when up to temperature, I noticed that as I revved the engine, coolant would flood into the expansion bottle top inlet from the hose connecting it to the small outlet on the thermostat housing and the small overflow outlet on the polo rad (and subside again as the revs died down.) Is this normal? i.e. due to the water pump spinning faster with increase of engine speed?
Engine is plumbed as per Chris Gamlin's blade cooling dia. for early engines.
Also, the Superdream reg/rectifier is overcharging the battery. (Voltage across battery at idle is 14.5V rising to 18.5V when engine revs increase.) I've wired it up as per 'Shortie's' wiring diag. - though I haven't connected up the black wire to anything yet.

Andy.

Not sure about the first bit but 18.5v across the battery sounds JZ- electrolysis city.... 14.5v should be top banana voltage....

Water could spew out of the expansion bottle due to crud in the water galleries if the engine has sat for a while... but it's not normal behaviour...

Both sound bad to me, rectifier shot for the volts, your battery will last an hour before its burnt out.

Water could just be that you did not get enough air out of the system or the highest point of the system is lower than the top of the cylinder head.

If you get an air pocket you get a hot spot and the water boils when you rev and water flows across the cylinder head.

Regards Mark

Water flow into your expansion bottle sounds normal.
Although I have a k-series, the water flow can be seen through the bottle from the top hose.
The level does go up slightly with expansion of the hot water and back down when it cools.
Can't help with the voltage, but it does sound like a voltage regulator problem.

I think you need to connect the extra (black) wire.
I dont quite understan it but I think it gives feedback to maintain regulation.
Connect it to any +ve pont and test again.
18v willl soon kill the battery.

Water sounds normal

[Edited on 9/4/07 by ReMan]

Your water statement sounds perfectly normal... the expansion bottle is used as a feed only when going from hot to cold state. Therefore you would expect water to vent to the lowest pressure point i.e. the expansion bottle. As long as the water is flowing correctly do the following... remove the expansion bottle cap, get engine to temperature then replace the cap. When it cools down the bottle is in partial vacuum. If you dont have enough air to compress in the expansion bottle she'll blow it out anyway!

The black needs to be connected to maintain regulation of the voltage.

Steve

this is normal (with the water going into the top of the expansion bottle) it did this on both my BMWs and my dads vauxhall. it keeps the coolant in rotation (so the fluid in the bottle is being circluated)

Hi

as already said, connect the black wire to a +12V feed. At 5000 rpm the voltage across the battery should then be between 13.0 and 15.5V if everything is working correctly.


HTH


Ed

Thanks for the responses everyone.
Glad the coolant issue is perfectly ok. (Thought it might have been sign of a head gasket failure, so I did take off the expansion bottle cap to check for oil or exhaust contamination just to make sure - no sign of any.)
Also, having now connected up the reg/rect black wire I'm getting a constant 14-14.5v across the battery irrespective of revs.
I had it in my mind that the black wire was at 12v +ve generated by the reg/rect for say a charge warning lamp and so thought, wrongly, that it would have no effect on voltage regulation.
As a side issue, I did have probs with a short to the dash wiring which kept blowing the fuse. (traced it to the master cylinder level float switch being incorrectly wired up) but now sorted.
However, when I connected up the temp gauge on the blade clocks (later 893cc with electronic analogue speedo) I get full scale deflection.
Can anyone confirm I've correctly wired it?
I've connected up as follows:-
Temp. sender blue/green wire connected to blue/black wire of temp. gauge.
12v +ve feed wire connected to gauge's black/brown wire and the gauge's green/black wire connected to earth.


Andy.

Glad it's better now
It's a funny one, I can only guess it's a sort of feedback to monitor true outpu and regulat accordingly.
As for the temp gauge, I think taht is all wired correctly, so it may be you have a duff sensor, or gauge.
If you disconnect sensor end does the needle drop back?

Think i've sussed the gauge problem.
There are a bunch of green/black wires all common to each other which on closer inspection, look like they're the earth's for the warning lights. The green/black for the temp. guage and speedo are in fact, seperate from the others. Not realising this (I presumed they were all joined together), I had earthed the warning lights etc - not the temp guage!
Once I earthed the correct green/black, needle swung back to the 'zero' position.
Then, to test, earthed temp.sender wire and got full scale deflection. So initially, looks like its working as it should!
Will do 'proper' running test tomorrow at a more social hour so as not to upset neighbours too much! (Just another excuse, really, just to listen again to that lurvely noise the engine makes! )

Andy.