Why Whitworth ?

8:00 am and I was already working on the Alpine to look at the earth connection. Easy to spot and did not need to jack the car up to get to it either. Not sure it's in the correct place though.

Turns out that the bolt that holds the Earth strap connector is Whitworth and it’s at Whitworth fitting that was why neither the Imperial nor the metric did not fit exactly. Odd it's the second Whitworth fitting I've found. Anyway Can you see it under the rust ?

So I did what I could - scrubbed everything with the wire brush and sanded back the paint to metal. I also cleaned up the nut and used new washers. Tightened it up and it started fine.

Then Alpine off to fill up with petrol and it was fine - no charging problem either.

The off to Icksworth House 35 miles away (not including taking the wrong turning off the A14 first time) in the heat. Funny thing was that the charging problem immediately came back - full charge. So I had the lights on to drain off some of the power and continued. The more we went on the A14 at top speed the less it charged until it settled down again.

Here we are. So the car started easily for our return - but so did the charging problem. The same cycle - high charging until we'd done about 20 miles and then it settled down. So we did 70 miles in 25 degrees and the car ran fine - if still a bit lumpy at mid throttle.

Then collected the lawnmower in the trusty SAAB for a late night mow.