I figured I'd turn my bad luck to other people's advantage. Something for the archives...

How to figure out you have a bad alternator.

1. At idle, your voltage is around 12 volts. Should be around 13 or 13.5.

2. For a few months, if I was at idle with my radio too loud, it would cut off my radio because it didn't get enough power. This was even more prevalent with my air conditioning on because it draws more power. If your car does this, it is a good sign that you're going to need a new alternator soon because the same thing happened to me and guess what? Alternator died the day before turkey day.

3. If your car fits this criteria, I suggest going to Autozone or Discount Auto and getting it tested. There's a little machine they hook it up to and you can see how good it is. My bad alternator put out about 1.5 volts. Not too good. The new/rebuilt one that I bought put out a good 13.5 volts. Anywhere from 12.5 to 15 is a good alternator.

Instructions for when you get a new alternator.

1. If you killed your battery because you didn't have a working alternator, read this one. If not, don't worry about it.
You cannot hook up a good alternator to an almost dead or a fully dead battery, because it will spike the alternator and kill it. If you aren't at home, like you're at a gas station or something, hook up the jumper cables to another running car while you are replacing the alternator. This should give your battery some good juice by the time you want to drive it. If you are at home, I'd suggest putting a battery charger on slow drip for a while before you drive it.

Well, I hope my bad experiences can help some other people diagnose a bad alternator. Really, if your car is kind of old and you know it hasn't been checked in a while, and you have some electrical gremlins every once in a while, go to Autozone and get it checked. It doesn't even take 5 minutes to take off the alternator so it can't hurt to do it.


This has been a TriangleMan Posts production.
Written, produced, and directed by TriangleMan.
Based on a true story.
The facts have been saved to protect the unaware.

 

i wish dragnet was on, that movie kicks so much ***
*puts on lambskin chaps and does P.A.G.A.N. dance*


and you have a great lil imformative post, this **** should be archived and categorized where we can find them much easier

 

Since I can't edit my post, I need to say that at idle with your radio very low or off, your voltage should be around 13-13.5. If you have your radio blasting with 2000 watts of boom boom your voltage will obviously be lower.