Well after a deeply frustrating day where nothing really seemed to go right, I got around to taking the alternator off again as the Postie had delivered my new regulator from California. All the part numbers matched as I said earlier. It was the correct plug for the loom and was an exact match for the holes etc in the body of the alternator. All back together, mounted and tensioned. Got it started and the volts came up a bit and hit somewhere around 14. looking good. I put it on a fast idle and the volts hit around 16 and the turbo light started to flicker. Clearly not happy. Even the dash volt meter was showing high. Idling with lights on etc it didn't seem to power up to meet the demand particularly.
Now the batteries have had a charge on the drive so they weren't flat exactly but I wondered if somehow the alternator was banging in massive (relatively) charge to bring them up to speed as it were.
Yes yes I know I can take it to my local place and they'll test it, but I'm very busy and the part looked right and was cheap. Like less than £30 so well worth a punt.
Does anyone have any wisdom on this one as to what might be happening? At idle it's still not really making 14.4v
The alternator is a load of windings, some contacts and a regulator - right? So it can only be the reg, I presume.
Chris