Is my alternator dead?
 

I'm hoping I can get some opinions from some people smarter than me ;)

A week ago I drove it for an hour. Went into a store and came back out 40 minutes later - started fine but all of my dummy lights were on. Car ran fine and the lights went out after 10 minutes.
Fired it up on Saturday and immediately heard the airpump engaging and disengaging. Went for a drive around town and after 15 minutes the car really started running like crap. INSANE backfiring :eek: everywhere and it stalled out a couple of times. I jumped the car and limped it home. It wouldn't stay running for more than 30 seconds before dying. The battery was obviously dead.

It was clear to me the airpump was not doing it's job and something was draining the battery. I trickle charged the battery back to full and started it again a few minutes ago and the airpump was doing the same engage / disengage thing again.

I searched some threads and settled on this:
https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...airpump+engage

So I'm looking to know - do you think the alternator is dead?

Thanks

Dave

Im not positive so Im not gonna give you an answer. BUT..I do however have a brand new oem FD alt. for sale for 200$. Pm and lemme know.

uhh. OK.
Mine is polished so I'm looking to keep the look. Maybe there is someone out there that will rebuild it? (if the alt. is my prob).

Sounds like it could be the alt....any shop will usually test it for free or nearly free.

it is dead. i had the same problem as a matter of fact when it decided to crap out on me at the mcdonalds drive thru :(

Take it to an auto electric shop, NOT a mechanic as they will just take it to an auto electric shop in most cases, and then tag on more.

I know in alot of cases, that if it just needs something simple like brushes and you take it to them (meaning off the car), it can cost as little as 30-40 bucks to repair, maybe up to 60-80. If it needs a stator or if the rotor is shot, it could be over 100 bucks easily, but like said above, most will check it for free and tell you what they think. Could be a simple fix, and replacing brushes is pretty easy if you wanted to do it yourself.


Bad alternators can cause alot of hell, bad idle, stalling, just a mess of problems that are easily fixable.

well, if you wanted to, buy a replacement and swap the internals to your polished housing.