Sir Nibble

There is no such thing as too much rope.

Smartarses do.

At the end of that they not only felt that they can do as they please, they had proved it. THEY are in charge of what you may or may not have and what you can do with it. That's power.

It's not about acquiring property by theft, it's about power. Any useless waster can exercise power over you by stealing your property and destroying it. It is about making you angry, upset and prey to impotent rage. This and the ability to assault and injure someone weaker is the only power some people will ever wield and they do so in order to feel that they have some importance and cannot be ignored. That's my theory anyway.

My ears pricked up as soon as I saw Which lines up nicely with the big-volts-drop-across-the-rotor theory. This could be the regulator, in fact there are only 3 things it is likely to be, 1 Brushes/slip ring. Either a corroded slip ring or a broken brush lead. Take the regulator out and visually inspect the slip ring and see if either of the brushes fall out. 2 Rotor, unlikely, measure its resistance, should be around 4 ohms. 3 Regulator. Seen it happen with these, if non of the obove apply I would drop in the reg from your spare and see what happens.

Curly, if the fuse is melting before the conductor itself ruptures then this may be due to the heat generated by a poor connection rather than excess current. These torpedo shaped "continental" style fuses are particularly susceptable to poor contact and I would suggest that you closely inspect the fuseholder for signs of heat generated discolouration, clean out the totally inadequate hole in each end that forms the contact and bend the blades inwards slightly to restore the tension on which the contact relies. If this does not solve your problem then post again and I will describe the procedure for tracing a short circuit.

If you are going the route of increasing the belt width or even fitting twin belts it may be worth your while looking at the more modern land rovers where 100A or even 120A alternators are fitted which should drop straight on to a BMC. Once upon a time I would bore the forum with a list of part numbers but I no longer have a job where the relevant catalogues are at hand.

Ive known a few battery explosions in my time due to detonation of the gasses produced, (never actually caused one myself mind, touch wood). As this is a bike battery, I presume this is the type with non vented caps and a single vent tube at one end. If this is the case then if a moulding flaw left the vent blocked at some point then you may have suddenly vented the pressurisation of more than one cell at once. Are you sure you removed the little plug at the point where the vent tube should connect? If there is a moulding flaw blocking the vent then this will happen again and you should get the battery changed.

Oooooh! You bitch!

Once, many moons ago I worked at a garage that had a particularly dim painter (probably sufferring from "solvent dementia) I invented a mind reading helmet with bits of bent coathanger and a couple of scrap bits. We put this on him and for audible output used an old car stereo tuned between stations. I would not be surprised if he continues to believe to this day that the resulting white noise was an accurate rendering of his thought processes.