Thread: cooling fan
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Old 09-03-2015, 12:52 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Prescott, AZ
Cobra Make, Engine: Classic Roadsters
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ironhead View Post
Thanks Joel, I like your Cobra pics. I will follow up on your advice.This has been an ongoing problem, I would like to enjoy the car. I think CR's wiring is way to light.
Thanks for the compliment. My CR has 35K miles on it now, is my commuter car and looks better in pics than up close

There's an additional thing you could do if you have the battery in the trunk, are using a gear reduction starter, and have a heavy gauge positive battery cable. I'd do all the other stuff first though.

I had all the above in my CR and my auto elec/alt guy advised me to swap the "0" gauge sized battery cable for a 2 gauge. His explanation was that there's amperage loss as the electrons travel through the copper. With a long run of large cable, there's a lot of copper between the alt and battery so the loss is greater than with a forward mounted battery. With the old fashion starters and a high compression motor, the larger cable was needed. With a gear reduction starter it isn't as they take much less amps to energize and crank. Gear reduction starters use a fraction of the amps as the old direct drives do. He told me I likely could go with smaller than 2 gauge but using that size would always get plenty of power to starter.

After I installed the 2 gauge cable, the system voltage generally runs higher. I've never tried to measure the amp difference at the battery end but the system goes below 12 volts a lot less than it used to. So my alt output is still marginal, just less marginal. As soon as my current alt has a hiccup, I'll fork out the money for a new GM 1 wire alt

I hope this helps.
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Thanks,
Joel Heinke (early 90's CRL Cobra)
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