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I live in South africa where parts for my Austin healey is not available. It looks like ome of the coils of my regulater has burnt (have not tested it yet). is there any new modern part i can use taking in to account that i am going to rewire the car.
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HI Derick,
You can find most any part you need on the Internet. Moss Motors is one supplier. Shipping cost my be a little high but just about every part of most every model of Healey is available, even body parts.
If you are not going to keep the car original, a good conversion is to purchase a GM alternator with a "V" pulley and an internal regulator. The fabrication of the mounts is easy and the alternator with two wires is easy to connect especially if you are rewiring that section anyway. This was a common conversion even when the Healeys were new. I hope this helps, let me know.
Howard
hello Howard
I also think this is the better option (altenator) but the only thing i was worried about is the starter motor. if im going to switch to a negative ground would this then change the direction of rotation of the starter? because i heard from an auto-electritian that new alternators needs to be negative ground.
AnswerHi Derick,
It was a common practice in the 60s and 70s to change polarity on British cars in the US. Most that came to me wanted to install alternate radio systems that only came in negative ground. Some because they wanted an alternator instead of the DC generator.
When they wanted to keep the generator, I needed to repolarize the generator. Depending on the model and brand of British car I had to reverse several components.
The ignition coil must be reversed, the fan motor, in a few cases they had a late model electric fuel pump that had a diode in it and it needed to be reversed. The original SU pumps operated OK without reversing it's leads.
I didn't run into any car that required any alteration to the starter system. The only places you may need to reverse leads is where you may find diodes or motors with permanent magnet fields. Even though the wiper motor was a permanent magnet field and did run the motor backwards, the wipers still worked since the wiper part worked off of a crank system so it didn't matter which way the motor ran and most motors could handle a load in either direction. In some cases the park switch in the case was designed so it was difficult to get it adjusted correctly so I just switched the motor wires in the inside of wiper case. The heater fan in most all cases is a cage type fan and it blows air when running in either direction, however, the amount of air is reduced if the cage is run backwards so you should switch the wires. If you have a Kettering ignition (points) all you need to do is switch the small leads on the coil. However, if you have installed an electronic ignition system you may need to contact the manufacture as some could not be used either way but coils must be reversed no matter what ignition system you have.
You should also buy new battery cables as the (+) post is larger than the (-) post so you should not try to just switch cables.
The reason starters don't need to be changed is that they have wire wound fields so they can use a reversed battery system without any problems. There are some aftermarket high powered starters available for new cars that have a permanent magnet field but I never seen one that was (+) ground. I have not seen one available for an A-H.
In a few cases I had to reverse the leads on some MG tachs and one old Austin someone had installed an ammeter the had to be reversed. But most gauges worked OK.
I hope this helps, let me know.
Howard
