Lucas dynamo but 12V battery.

[adfergusson]

Hi again everyone.

So I bought a trickle charger for Keira. Yes I have now gone from referring to my car as a 'her' to actually naming 'her', I might be losing it a bit! But she is fantastic!

Anyway, back onto the subject. The charger can be set to charge at 6V or 12V. I thought that that the dynamo in my car charges at 6V. However, the battery in 'Keira' is a 12V battery. Further, when I measured the p.d. across the battery it was 14.4V, and this was after sitting in traffic for 2 hours on a hot day with the Kenlowe fan blowing its heart out. If the dynamo charges at 6v then my battery should not have a 14.4V p.d., right? It should be about 7V, max. And that would be after a pretty solid drive at motorway speed to charge the battery, not a 2 hour traffic jam. So should I use the 12V or 6V setting? Does this mean my dynamo might have been modified or upgraded (I would think that if the dynamo was going to be upgraded, it would be to an alternator) Is a 12V battery likely to blow out components like windscreen wipers, starter motor, etc...?

I'm assuming that as the p.d. across my battery is 12V as its says '12V' on the side I won't be at risk of the battery giving off hydrogen due to the charging voltage and blowing up the house! Let me know if I've got this assumption wrong please!

[p1vickers]

Your E-type is 12volts and the dynamo is a 12v unit probaly set by the regulator at the upper limit of 14.0V cut off ,so set the trickle charger for 12volts.
If the voltage across the battery is 14.4 volts shows you have a good one ,anything below 12.6v normally indicates a battery problem.

Regards

Pete
67 2+2

[adfergusson]

Thanks for that. For some reason I was under the impression that all S1 E-types were 6v, and 6v positive earth in the case of my dynamoed 3.8. I wasn't aware that I had a 12V system but am delighted to have a 12v system rather than a 6V system!