The first time that I noticed the following problem was the first time I drive the car during night.When the engine was on, the light indicator on the dashboard for the battery was a little on and I mean that during the day no one could see this but during the night everyone could see the little light , that became stronger when some other electrical stuff turned on and didn’t turned off when the rpms increased. Plus that every time the side repeaters turned on, the same time that make "klik" "klik" the light of the battery was turned on and then again off and at the same time every electrical instrument of the car didn’t work properly even the engine was making little pauses. My mechanic said to me that the problem is on the side repeaters and because he couldn’t find exactly where, he connects a cable for the side repeaters from the battery and the problem with these is solved but the light in the dashboard is remaining a little on .

I send an e-mail to Mr Andrea Nistri asking his opinion about the problem and he answered to me that the problem was at the voltage regulator and that the problem was too common to all Fulvias because at 60s and early 70s the voltage regulators are mechanical items and not electronic.

So I replace the alternator regulator with a new one. The old one was a Duchelier and I found a new one in a store witch had spare parts for Simca cars. I put that at the car but the problem with the light of the battery on the dashboard still didn’t eliminated , still glowed very dimly when many electrical stuff turned on all together . After that I decide to check more precisely the Alternator . I measured the voltage of the battery when the engine was on without any electrical load and I found 12.80 to 12.90 Volts . When all the electrical load applied the voltage became 11.00 to 11.20 Volts even if the rpms of the engine was high. My mechanic was telling me that these numbers are normal for old engines and the alternator was working

good and he thought that the battery wouldn’t have any problem in the future and the cause of the light on the dashboard was cable or earthing problem on the dashboard and nothing else. I asked Andrea if the numbers I measured was normal and his answer was that the battery voltage had to be more than 14 V even with high electrical load and he told me to check the wiring diagram of the car searching for something fault. After a very carefully examine of the wiring diagram , and a comparison with the wires in the fuse area , I found that the previous owner of the car maybe because of a broken flash indicator switch ( I replace it when I bought the car) ,he had replace the fuse for the indicator and he had connect it to the engine coil fuse .I changed the wires according to the wiring diagram so everything about cables was ok now at the engine area .

But the alternator problem still existed so I started to replace alternators (I have two others for stock) and I was comparing the measurements of the battery voltage.So with the old alternator (the Dushelier one) and before the voltage regulator replacing with a new one, the maximum battery voltage I measured even without electric load and with high rpm was 12.10 to 12.50 Volts .After I put the new voltage regulator the voltage I measured was 12.80 to 12.90 Volts so I show improvement to that, but with electrical load the voltage was only 11.00 to 11.20. After the replacing of the alternator with a Bosch alternator and a new electronic voltage regulator , the measure was 12.80 V to 13.50 V ( it depends of the rpm) without electric load and with electric load 11.50 to 12.40 .As everyone could see I never reached the 14 volts Andrea told me in his answer but the improvement was big so I decided to leave the Bosch alternator and to watch the battery condition carefully . but the charging light on the dashboard at night was making me nervous and angry.

During a trip to Athens with my Fulvia I visit there the best mechanic for Fulvia in Greece . When I told him about my problem, he laughed and in exactly five minutes solved the problem connecting a thick cable from the battery straight to the engine ignition key of the car. After that the battery light don’t glows any more and the battery voltage was without electric load up to 13.9 Volts. He told me that the problem was very common and created because of bad cable connections (connections with big resistance) inside the fuse box. Of course he checked the alternator and he told me that the electronic voltage regulator that I fit on my car was the best that I could do for it.