Dynamo is knackered!

Took it apart yesterday with my father. His first job was car electrics and he used to refurbish dynamos as a sideline in the 60's! Useful. So he helped me through some diagnostics, cos I had no real idea what to check nor how to check it. 

Firstly, the obvious that even iI could see, brushes looked fine. So that meant that other problems were likely.

Secondly, whether it was charging or not, the bush was extremely worn, the armature was flopping around a bit. All my noises can probably be attributed to that, 

Also, caused by that, the plates on the field coils were worn where the slack had allowed the armature to come into contact. Thus probably overheating and knackering the coils beneath. Bottom line was his opinion was that it was knackered. We did some clean up work and some re-testing and although a magnetic field was being induced, it was not doing it's thing. This indicated that the field coil was probably OK after all and that the issue lay in the armature. Unlikely it was ever going to charge again in it's current state. Even if it did, the bush and bearing would need replacing.

Just to check I refitted back into the car this morning, but sure enough, no change.

I cannot be bothered to try to refurbish it, not worth it. So will order one of these replacement Alternators that are available now. Very reasonably priced, direct replacement in same body, plus built in regulator, so can bypass that (one less component to worry about in future)