APRA Electrical Clinic Great Resource By Bob Thomas Spring always brings more than warm weather and green trees. Each year I also look forward to the opportunities pro- vided by the Automotive Parts Rebuilders Association (APRA) Electrical Clinic and the Electrical Rebuilder’s Association (ERA) E+ Show. While I used to attend these events only when they were close enough to drive, I now realize they are well worth the cost of a plane ticket. Each of us needs to attend one of these. Electrical rebuilding is changing faster and becoming more technical with each passing month. Getting behind in these times can be fatal to your business and two of the three best chances you have to stay abreast of “what’s happening” are by attending these events. The third is attending a Joe Davis Seminar—soon to be in a neighborhood near you—so keep your eyes open. If you missed the Dallas Electrical Clinic, March 13 and 14, here is some of what I learned at the Sunday seminars: Many rebuilders have been experi- encing problems with the new ASVR Delphi regulators. Unlike previous reg- ulators, these are made up of a single integrated circuit. Delphi engineer Jack Harmon really shed some serious light on why many of us have been having problems. This series regulator has several protective circuits that make it impervious to destruction from high voltage and reverse spikes. The idea was to make it more durable. However, these protective circuits are not turned on until the regulator has B+ and ground hooked up. The engineers were thinking, “This guy gets spiked on the vehicle.” Nobody ever takes it off, do they? They never considered the test bench or the regulator tester. If the ASVR regulator plug receives power before the B+ or ground connec- tions are made, sudden failure is nearly certain. If death is not instant, it cannot be far away. Many test benches power the plug first and the B+ only when the motor begins to turn. You need to take care when testing this regulator, bench testing this alternator, or installing it on the car. Check your tester now. If you have a powered up plug and the B+ only comes alive with the motor, you need to install a switch on the plug power, to turn it off. If you have been experiencing multiple failures, you now know why. If the installer leaves the battery connected (many do—myself included at times), care must be taken to mount the alternator (ground) first, install B+ wire second, and install the plug last. The simplest thing is to disconnect the battery, but that creates a whole other set of problems. Memory saver devices can damage the regulator too, so we all have some hard choices to make here. My good friend Mohammad Samii gave a seminar on ECM/PCM con- trolled regulators, now becoming quite common in GM applications. With these regulators (mostly CS130D appli- cations but a few CS130 as well), the light is turned off and on by a light dri- ver outside the regulator. This driver can be in the dash or inside the PCM. The alternator is turned on by the PCM as is the charge light. To further complicate the testing, the voltage signal to turn on the alternator is a fre- quency signal, not a voltage signal (although voltage is present). This voltage is lower than what we would normally expect to see and must be tested with a digital voltmeter— not a test light. GM says this signal should be five volts, but one rebuilder told me this signal can actually be much lower in some cases. These regulators can be vehicle specific and many similar ones will not interchange. Match the regula- tor to the application if you want to save yourself some headaches. One last note on this involves the resetting of fault codes. The codes on ODB-II vehicles cannot be reset by dis- connecting the battery. A scan tool must be used to remove them, or 40 warm-up cycles (which would take many hours). In some cases, the PCM may not turn out the charge light in spite of a perfectly working alternator, unless the fault code is reset. In other cases, the PCM might not even turn on the alternator, unless the code is reset. While I have not seen this myself (lucky I guess), I have talked to several other rebuilders who have. If you do installations, you need to be aware of this. It might be wise to buy a generic scan tool and learn to use it before you need it. Robbie Sullivan of Ace Electric and Dave Kaplan of Transpo teamed up to provide some great info on “Drive & Solenoid Facts and Diode/Rectifier Technology.” Sullivan covered several drive problem areas, including the Mitsubishi drive used on _ Ford Powerstroke diesels as well as some forklift starters. This drive, like a few earlier Hitachi drives, slides onto the planetary shaft assembly, rotates one spline, to a blind end spline, and is then locked on the shaft. Some of these drives have splines that are 2 mm too long. They will go on the shaft fine, but will not rotate and they will not lock on. It would be possible for an inexperienced rebuilder to let this pa