Anyway, I had a look and diagnosed the charging problem as actually being down to a broken aux. belt tensioner mounting (not sure of the cause, maybe something caught between belt & pulley). That car is now on our drive waiting for me to collect a £50 lump of aluminium from the dealer either later on or tomorrow.
OK pretty run-of-the-mill stuff so far, at least for what goes on round here... Weird thing is though while working on removing the damaged bracket another guy from further down the road came along and asked if I'd be interested in a '55 plate Signum with a blown turbo for £150, or an Astra van, stating his reason for asking me in particular as because "I've noticed you're into your Vauxhalls & see you've had a few Vectras and stuff so thought you might like another project..."
Me, into Vauxhalls....


Humour aside, I don't mind the old Vectra B as they're a reasonably good cheap workhorse with decent spec levels but I wouldn't say I was "into" them as such... Although I will admit that when I get a moment I'll be looking into the values of the Signum model, and prices on turbos etc, plus any pitfalls to look out for doing a turbo on a1.9 CDTi
