Again, how are you checking if it's charging? When an alternator is
charging you should see about 14.5v on, say, the brown at the fusebox. When
it isn't you will only see about 12v or less as the battery discharges. Is
this what you have been seeing?
Is the warning light operating as it should? If it is you should see the
alternator has failed some time before the car dies.
You really could do with finding out what is going wrong with the alts,
without that we are a bit in the dark. It is just possible that you have a
bad connection in the alt plug which is going open-circuit after a few days
of use. Then when it is unplugged and plugged back in again it 'tickles-up'
the connection so it works again for a few days. If that were the case the
alt would test just fine on the bench. The diodes rarely fail en-masse,
tending to fail one at a time which causes the warning light to glow
brighter as more electrical load is placed on the car.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Jose" <mwjose@cox.net>
To: <mgs@autox.team.net>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 1:57 PM
Subject: alternators 2
> By "going through" i mean that i put a brand new one on, rebuilt by a
> specialty company in phoenix which does them for the shop i go to, and
> then a few weeks or a few days later, the car dies. I bring the car
> into the shop, and the battery is not charging. I put a different
> alternator on, check to see it's charging, it is, and away i go. A few
> weeks to a few days later, the car dies again. Check for charging,
> none, put a new alternator on and it charges. I dont' know yet what
> exactly is failing in them. Over the time I've had the car, I've gone
> through maybe a dozen, mostly cheap Checker ones, but I've now gone
> through 4 or 5 of these high quality rebuilts.
> This question is driving me crazy, and the car is worthless until I get
> this solved.
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