Alternator Problems on vacation in Chicago

So, I'm on vacation with the wife in Chicago

Drove up here in our 1995 Thunderbird SC with 112k on it.

In the last 3 months, I've dumped a little over 1k into my car

New tires, new suspension parts, rebuilt alternator

So, this afternoon, sitting at a light, my battery / alternator light starts flickering. Damnit, one or the other is flaky again.

The guy who rebuilt it quoted me $50-60 bucks, a reman with lifetime warranty was double that, so I went for the rebuild, figuring getting new bearings, brushes, all those goodies was better than a reman that just had whatever was bad changed etc. I got it back, and was $15 short of the reman, he had to go way over the estimate to replace the regulator and also a rectifier.

Anyways, something is going out.

I'm in a strange city, don't know where to find a parts store like Autozone. I know that the local parts house was going to have to order me an alternator since it wasn't a regular "stocked" part back when I had mine rebuilt.

So, I'm here, the trip home is ~250 miles, takes 4.5-5 hours. Once we are out of the city (first hour or so, 50 miles), it's smooth sailing down I-65

I have limited tools available to me. I have my craftsman tool kit in the car, it has almost everything I needed to remove and reinstall the alternator, short of the silicone I used to seal the top of the blower. However, I don't have a battery charger to recharge the battery as we all know these cars need a full charge otherwise they'll ruin a new alternator.

So, I am thinking I have a few real choices

1) Try to get the car home. Leave early Sunday morning after it gets light so I don't need the lights, avoid using anything like the radio/wipers/etc unless I have to and hope I can get home or _closer_ to home so I can get some help to come up and meet me. The car has an optima yellow top in it, just over 2 years old.

1b) Choice #1, plus I hit a walmart, sears, somewhere and get a spare battery. If the first one goes dead, throw in #2 and limp the car home on it.

2) find a shop tomorrow, stay in Chicago until Monday or Tuesday and get it fixed up here, spend an arm and a leg, and come home when it's done

3)???

What do ya'alls think I should do?

Any suggestions are welcomed. I'm tempted to go with plan #1 or plan #1b.

The same thing happened to me

I ran into almost an exact type of situation. I have a 1995 SC with 130k on it. EDITED - I INITIALLY WROTE THIS FORUM WITH THE INTENTION TO HELP OUT.. WHEN I FIRST WROTE THIS I FORGOT COMPLETELY THAT THE ALTERNATOR SPECIALIST TESTED THE ALTERNATOR BEFORE I LEFT AND I SEEM TO REMEMBER HIM SAYING THAT IT WAS PARTIALLY CHARGING/WORKING, LIKELY BECAUSE OF CHANGES THAT HE MADE. IN HINDSIGHT I PROBABLY WOULD NOT HAVE POSTED MOST OF MY COMMENTS BELOW BECAUSE YOUR CAR WILL LIKELY REACT DIFFERENT TO MINE AS MY ALTERNATOR WAS MODIFIED....... I HAVE TAKEN THE TIME TO TRY TO EDIT MY COMMENTS WITH THIS NEW INFORMATION... SORRY IF IT'S CONFUSING AND ALSO ABOUT THE TERRIBLY LONG NARRATIVE. I DID GET A CHANCE TO TELL MY STORY THOUGH! BTW MY SC DROVE BEAUTIFULLY ON THE HIGHWAY LIKE ALWAYS..... CORY

I was on a trip and was approx 4 ½ hours from home. I stayed an extra night before going home as an alternator rebuilder was going to try to rebuild it for me. In the end, it didn’t work out because the SC alternator is larger than normal and specialized and he could not fix it. One of the problems was that he could not get all the parts because it was already evening, a long weekend and the stores/warehouses were closed already and not open on Saturday.

I ended up driving home. The alternator specialist was very helpful though and he re-charged my battery before I left. I unplugged my headlights so the “day-time” wouldn’t run either. I stopped and got a charge after two and a half hours of driving. I was lucky to stop in a city where I knew someone that could fully recharge my battery before I continued. The battery charged overnight. The next day I went the remainder of the trip (two hours) again, with a re-charge just before I left, no daytime running lamps and kept most everything off to save power. I got home and my local Ford dealership found a rebuilt aftermarket alternator for me and installed it the following week.

Ideas:
1) You may want to start calling around first thing in the morning (Saturday) to try and find an aftermarket alternator. Start with the Ford or other dealerships – they may have an idea where you could get one. There may be a possibility that you could find one and get it installed tomorrow. But Beware, after my first two and a half hour drive a Ford dealership said they had an alternator for me, and I stayed in town for the afternoon. It turned out they got the wrong alternator (of course they discovered this after they had my car apart) and they could not get the right one for a Saturday delivery so that’s why I had to stay overnight before my final two hour trip home (it was dark already on Saturday) on the Sunday.
2) If no luck finding a replacement, (EDITED) and you decide to drive, I'm not sure if you would be able to drive two and a half hours (on a previously fully charged battery) like I did because I think my alternator may have had a partial charge in it after the specialist worked on it WHICH MAY HAVE ENABLED ME TO DRIVE MY CAR LONGER. YOUR CAR MAY NOT LAST AS LONG ON THE ROAD IF YOUR ALTERNATOR IS PROVIDING NO CHARGE. This means that if your battery runs out sooner, you'll obviously have to replace it with one (or more) batteries, or alternatively, recharging, but you will have to wait a while for the battery to recharge. EDIT - SEE FURTHER COMMENTS BELOW FROM TBIRDSCFAN ON VOLTMETER...... YOU CAN'T LET THE BATTERY FULLY DEPLETE IT'S CHARGE OTHERWISE THE CAR WILL DIE.
3) I don’t think that you will be able to make the full trip non-stop with your current battery, WITHOUT RECHARGING OR REPLACING THE BATTERY. I am pretty certain about this because when I started out, my alternator light wasn't on, but after two and a half hours it was on 100% of the time, so I knew I needed to recharge. One question I have is once the battery is fully depleted and with no alternator working, will the car stall? This didn’t happen to me as I recharged (overnight) after my first two and a half hour drive. Then I had a “fresh” battery for the remaining two hour drive the next day.
4) It sounds like you don’t want to buy a battery charger but this is recommended in addition to buying another battery. If you buy one from Walmart or someplace else if you can find one, maybe you could return it on Monday in your hometown if you didn’t end up using it at all. At least you won’t be stranded on your trip (i.e., you could stop anywhere and re-charge).
5) Make sure you unplug your daytime headlights. From the open engine compartment, just reach into the “nose” of the car and unplug the chords going directly into the headlights. Make sure when you get home you remember to plug back in as you won’t have headlights anymore!
6) As a further suggestion, you can also buy solar panels to plug into your lighter socket. The solar panels I believe are supposed to charge the battery as you drive. But I doubt if the charge would be that much.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

The Autozone website has a store locator, and should say if they have the part in stock ( I know the AZ near me has an alternator for my 94 SC normally in stock )
.. you will need to buy the alternator here or there, your battery wont last long enough to get home even if you have a spare, and then you may be stuck on the side of the freeway in the middle of nowhere.
I drove on a dead alternator for about an hour before the car started shutting down ( then you may fry electronic components also )
It shouldnt take more than an hour or so to change out the alternator.
- Dan

did you have your daytime running lights on? I did not have a problem with frying electronic components afterward (that I am aware of).

Try finding Autozone online or in the yellow pages. They can test alternators and charge batteries for you. You don't have to remove your upper intercooler tube either. I had problems with the fusible link for my alternator. It's a turqouise or light gray 16 gauge wire I believe that goes from your alternator to your starter relay on the drivers fender. Check and see if the wire core is broken inside the wire insulation on that. You can change 3 new alternators (like I did) and if that wire is broken they will just keep dying. Also, check your grounds and make sure the cables aren't corroded and the terminals are clean. Good luck!

If you decide to "take the chance" and drive and I see that you would be leaving Sunday, to make sure that your current battery is fully charged before you leave you should buy the battery charger and charge your current battery all night Sat. night before you leave Sunday, then drive straight out of town. As some of the battery chargers have an indicator showing the level of charge in the battery, I would also throw on the new battery just to test it to see if it is fully charged.

P.S. - one other thing I remember doing is that on both trips I drove very "easy" and tried not to cut in the supercharger (i.e., not create any "boost"). For some reason, I thought that might contribute to draining the battery but I'm not sure if it did or would or not. Also, keep the climate control (heat/air) off and as you indicated, anything that might drain the battery.

battery charger

I had to go to Walmart for something else, but while I was there I checked out the prices of the battery chargers. They ranged in price from US$35.00 (cheap) to US$140.00.

Anyway, hope that you find an alternator in stock tomorrow so the problem will be fixed..

Cory

cc95sc deleted this one!

1b sortof .. For a 4 hour trip, you should be able to make it with no accessories running.. that is no lights, no fan, no stereo, no window up-n-down, no defrost, no A/C, easy on the brakes. In the daytime on the road, you won't need much electrical power as the cooling fan won't need to run and the pump motor for the power brakes won't need to run as often. You also won't have headlights or wipers or heaters going. You can drive for a long time that way, but when the battery gets too low, you need to charge it back up. A cheap voltmeter monitoring the cigarette lighter will tell you the running voltage. When it hits 10, you need a recharge. 9.5-ish will cause the electronics to go nuts and the car will die.
I would get a cheap charger, extension cord, and cheap voltmeter and when it came time to give it a boost, I'd stop and borrow some electricity.

Saw your pinball page. I used to maintain a Twilight zone game back at my old office . Here is a link that I think most serious pin-heads already know about.. the guy's name is Marvin and w/o his tips and articles, our TZ would have been out of commision.

I was in a similar situation in the middle of Montana, on a Sunday. Not in my SC but in my 87 firebird I had before that. One place open and they didn't have an alternator, but they did have a battery....

I bought a spare battery and hit the road.... voltmeter is steadily going down and wouldn't you know it, it starts raining HARD so I had to run the wipers. Didn't turn on the lites even though I should have and didn't run the stereo. I did run the heater though cuz it was cold! Made it a little over 100 miles before she started cutting out..... perfect timing because I was coming up on a rest area just east of Missoula. Stopped and put my new battery in and made it the rest of the way home (180 miles) with no problems.

You might pick up one of those voltmeters that plug in to the cigarrette lighter ( Autozone and NAPA both sell them) so you can see where the voltage is for sure. My brother had an 87 Mustang 5.0 that the charging light would come on sometimes even when everything was fine (that car had a voltmeter like SC's should...) He had that car for 6 years and it never gave him a problem; the light just came on sometimes. Maybe that's what's happening with your SC...??

nice to know you made it home

btw the alternator can be removed without removing the IC tubes and without removing the pulley , you just gotta get really creative and twist it at an angle, i removed mine 2 times like that.

Thanks for all the ideas

It's a little after 8 AM in Chicago now. I'm getting ready to call the closest AutoZone, whose website claims they have an alternator. I checked the one back home, and they don't have one, yet the one here does. Guess there's more stuff at an AZ in a bigger city. Makes sense I reckon.

Before, I had the belt off, coil pack out, had all 3 bolts off the alternator, and it still wouldn't come out without pulling the IC tube. I guess I can try it again, but I can't see how you would get it out without removing the IC tube. That's not difficult at all, just time consuming.

I may try to find a shop that will change the alternator out for me, depending on price. It's kinda cold here, I'm limited on tools, and am on vacation. I might be willing to spend a few bucks to have it done versus freeze outside working with limited tools.

I'm also gonna let the AZ test my alternator for me, I guess it could be the battery instead. That would be easier, although would suck in other ways since the yellow top is pricey.

If I buy an alternator, I can't make the guy back home fix the one I paid $120ish to rebuild, since the core is like $70. Oh well.

Wish me luck!

I looked around this morning, Autozone was closer than advance and they had an alternator in stock! Must be a bigger city stocks more, guess that makes sense.

Got to AZ, had the one we had rebuilt tested, sure enough, bad diode but plenty of charging voltage. We bought the alternator, and the guy behind the counter mentioned they had someone who could come and swap it out for me... so I let him call the guy. The $70 I was quoted was worth it to me to not have to get dirty on vacation and to get it over with. I supervised, and the 3 guys who fixed it only charged me $50 and only took 30 minutes! The guy from Autozone translated for me. They pretty much replaced it the same way I replaced the first one, only they paid a little more attention to detail.

So, $200 later, I have a reman alternator with lifetime warranty, a fully charged battery, and a new set of reverse star sockets!

I feel kinda bad that I spent that much to rebuild the first one, and had it fail and had to give it to the parts store as a core, but the guy who rebuilt it would've just fixed it anyways, not worth the $70 core charge to have a spare when the one in the car has a warranty!

Thanks for all the help!

--john

Really glad it worked out... have a safe drive home!

A little late but I have 2 alternaters from SC`s almost new but here is a good rule of thumb next time your not sure about your charging system, take a big screwdriver while the car is running and place it on the main berring on the back of the alternator and if its magnatised you are at least charging the battery some what. Works in a pinch. Glad to hear it worked out good for you.

If I'd have seen this sooner I'd have driven out to meet you somewhere and loaned you a spare alternator and brought the tools to swap it. Then when you got back home you could get it replaced and ship mine back to me. Sorry about not catching this sooner. I'm about 1.5 hours out of Chicago but I have friends and family there and know the area well. I was looking for an excuse to take a long drive and enjoy my new CD player as well.