The Restoration of #1768

[vwdmc16]

June 6 2010

After trying Napa and Kragen, nobody seems to know what a CS130 alternator is ( the '91-94 Saturn alternator) but finally I found another store that knew what I was looking for. It took some modification to fit such as the pulley change and drilling out the mount boss hole to about 7/16 " and adding the spacer I made for it to fit the delorean's bracket, I wired it up and it worked great. Worryingly it made a bit of whining which went away after a few minutes of breaking in.





later that day I went on a little drive again with another friend, Clark has a sweet 23k mile original '80 Louts Esprit. This baby has been well cared for and was all original, even the green carpeting. Clark is a old Cadillac enthusiast but still he loves the British Sports cars.







We met up in Davis, had some food, compared cars making the usual lucas jokes and after sitting in the sun for 15 minutes I started the car up fine but the battery light was on. I did all the diagnosis I could with my DVOM including hitting the alternator in fustrastion, nothing helped. It was puting out maybe an amp or two so our drive was canceled and I had to drive 12 miles to my shop with just 10.2v left. I took the alternator apart and found nothing visibly wrong. I had 3 working diodes good looking comm and brushes. Disappointed I drove home after I charged the battery up.

The next day I got the alt warrantied and installed the new one. This one has lasted thousands of miles and is still working today. Im still very happy with it and consider it a great and cheap upgrade.

[jawn101]

Does your friend still have the lotus? I'd love to see it one of these days

[vwdmc16]

I pretty sure he does, havent seen him in a while as he is always neck deep in Cadillac restorations but i'd love to have him bring it along whenever we get around to doing our own cruise.

[jawn101]

I hope that's soon. Stephen stopped by with his big ass truck on his way thru town the other night, and we discussed maybe getting the crew out to the 17 mile drive in Monterey. I can't think of a road/locale better suited to our cars and we should take advantage of it!

And I still wanna do that route through Copperopolis one of these days

[vwdmc16]

Definatley count me in on that, I also wanna go visit the norcal abandoned D too.



June 12 2010


More Dyno Time~Voltage is Power!


The new alt is working great, and besides gluing some more weather stripping on, changing the lower engine compartment hinges, I had just been driving the car daily to test the alternator and trying to weed out any more weak points. The car developed a small miss at lower rpms with light throttle input, I was thinking a clogged injector. I checked out the ignition system first, cleaned the plugs which looked great besides some dirty threads. But no faults were found. It was not a horrible problem, it was noticeable only to me.

I diagnosed further by driving the car on the chassis dyno and saw the car was going lean during the missing, but plenty rich at high throttle and high rpm. This meant there was some sort of intermittent fuel starvation, again I thought clogging in the injectors or fuel distributor.


However the car ran great when pushed harder ( more pressure in the injector lines maybe?) So for the fun of it mostly I installed a different and stronger ignition coil to see what effect that would give. quite a lot in fact.

Compared to my previous best run on the dyno which was ran without the air cleaner, to the new coil, with the filter and cold air intake installed, I gained nearly 10hp and just about 13 ftlb of torque! so my engine with hollow cat, cold air intake and MSD coil but otherwise stock now puts out 114.1 Whp and 143.6 Tq






June 15 2010

In less than one week I wound begin my long road trip to LA to start a rally race that finished in Tombstone AZ. I had to keep cracking on my upgrade and repair list. By now summer was here and the temps were in the high 90's and No I still ha NO aircon. I could have neglected a few other mechanical items and spent the money and time on repairing the A/C, looking back I wish I had but I had decided that I didnt have the time to do the job properly and would end up doing it twice, besides I grew up in Arizona summers so i figured I could handle it.....

You may notice below in the pic there is a yellow shock on the front suspension, my #1 mechanical concern was now handled: changing the horrible squeaking front shocks. Had I left the noisy front shocks in the car Im sure I would have turned around before LA and gone straight to a mental hospital, the squeak was that bad! I was able to borrow a set of shocks from a friend, Ill explain more later but these Bilsteins were not made to go on a Delorean....

I did another round of "routine" maintenance jobs like engine and trans oil change, coolant flush and an all round fastener check.


The low rpm miss I reported was getting worse somedays and better others, it was a large worry of mine but since the car ran just fine at higher RPM (like on the highway) I felt it wouldnt be a huge problem.
I also changed the front wheel bearings as they were getting very loud, louder than the engine on the highway. These gave a good fight to press out the bearings but some heat and ingenuity got them out. new bearings which cost just $14 each went in easily.

[DMC5180]

Are you still running the MSD coil? Any other ignition changes (plugs, wires etc) are you still running the ballast resistor?

[vwdmc16]

Yes over 2 yrs later yes im still running the MSD coil W/O the resistor. I still have not had any ignition failures with the coil even when its being fed a full 14v. The plugs and wires are still the ones from the DMCH kit I installed the first week I had the car(except for the coil to distributor cap wire which I removed the Houston wire with the additional resistor in exchange for a solid core wire I had laying around). later on you will see I had trouble with the impulse coil in the dizzy, however that issue had symptoms since I got the car running and not caused by the non stock coil. I still believe that removing the ballast and changing the coil was the best improvement I have made to my stock engine and I don't understand why other people dont have similar results.

[benjigolfpro]

It was great to read the story behind your D and all the work you have done. Would you get another D or is this the one and only?


Ben

[vwdmc16]

You know a good friend has asked me that and I decided recently that yes I will someday get another. As the car sits today in july 2012 I'd value the car at $18-20K and if I was offered $25K+ in cash I think I would sell it and get another car. But that's not likely. There are plenty of things i would like to do differently to my next car, For one im am done with "rolling restorations" and will go to the more conventional and effective way by mostly disassembling the car first and starting from the ground up. I also had a small discussion on the old .com forum about a full on Race Delorean id like to build from a basket case vehicle.

[Chris 16409]

So where did you find the 110amp Saturn Alternator? Searching on the major auto parts websites just returns 98amp units.