The comments I made regarding Lucas were aimed more at the wiring rather than other components. I wasn't for a minute suggesting it was better than contemporary manufacturers products, but I still argue that with many vehicles 40+ years old & still running with their original Lucas wiring, Rohan's & my own +2's being examples, it is no worse. Any wiring insulation exposed to extreme heat or oil/fuel contaminates will degrade in one way or another after a prolonged period, & many of the other problems associated with wiring in general are the result of amateur DIYers adding things like stereo's, extra gauges or spot lights etc, with no real idea of how to go about it correctly & generally bodging things along the way. Wire gauge would have been specified by the vehicle manufacturer, & as a general rule, most cars were built down to a budget & thinner wire meant less copper & hence less cost. Just look at the wire gauge in modern cars, all done to cut costs. The design/layout of the loom also would have been down to the vehicle manufacturer, so again, not really the fault of Lucas. Add in to this the fact that the vehicles concerned became just worthless old cars before they gained some classic status & therefore tended to fall in to the hands of those on limited budgets, general maintenance just didn't happen & essential repairs were done as cheaply as possible, often using already past their sell by date second hand parts, it's not surprising they gained a reputation for unreliability.
Moving on to Lucas components, yes, some had their weak points, & perhaps Bosch equivalents of the period may have been better, but there were a lot that were worse, Delco & Marelli for a start. Anyone who has had a Delco distributor would be lucky to get two of the cams giving the same points gap from new, leave alone after it had done a few miles! I vividly remember spending hours stoning the cams to get the same points gap, & open the points at the same degrees before TDC for each cylinder when tuning Vauxhall Chevettes. (Not for me I hasten to add
) I don't recall Lucas dynamos, regulators & alternators being significantly less reliable than their contemporaries, indeed the original alternator from my +2 is now on my Corsair as I decided to upgrade from the dynamo it had as standard. I fitted a new alternator to the +2 when I restored it in about 1990 as a matter of course, keeping the original as spare as there was nothing wrong with it. After the best part of 20 years sitting under the bench, I dug it out, gave it a clean, stuck it on the Corsair & it's working perfectly. I don't know what more you could ask? Likewise, starter motors, given the conditions they are asked to perform in, give many years of trouble free service. Like dynamos & alternators, they may require a set of brushes & the odd bearing once in a while, but at least they are made so you can carry out such repairs easily.
gus, I'm not sure who you are referring to with your statement ?One must mention they continued to use a generator until 1980, a good 15 years after everyone had changed to alternators.?, but I don't remember any British manufacturers using dynamo's, or generators if you prefer, after about the mid seventies, certainly they had gone by 1980, most phasing them out in the late sixties/early seventies & moving to alternators to cope with the increased electrical demand that was becoming the norm.
Regarding the 'cutting out every time you drove through a puddle' problem, well yes, we've probably all been there at some point, but it is certainly not restricted to Lucas equipped cars, & comes more down to component location, which is down to the vehicle manufacturer, not the manufacturer of the component, Lucas or otherwise, & often attempts by vehicle manufacturers to minimise this problem are removed by owners who then complain when the car stops in the wet. I have a Morris 1100 which still has the original rubber distributor cap cover that BMC felt it needed, & so equipped it will keep going through the heaviest rain & deepest puddles. I know from experience the removal of this cover will make servicing much easier, but it will also cause the car to stop in heavy rain.
As gearbox rightly points out, Lucas could have made things better, but then they would have been more expensive & vehicle manufacturers would have looked elsewhere for a cheaper alternative, & we would now be moaning about them instead.
Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2016 3:34 pm