Bad decisions and all that jazz...

[martym00se72]

Hi All,
I made a bad decision the other day – my battery has a tendency to go flat if not left on a maintenance charger – not an uncommon thing with these cars. I forgot to put the charger on and then decided I would use the car. The battery has one of those windows to say if it is flat or not and it said "go for it" . So I did. Normally if there is to be any issue it will be at that initial start – it won't. But it did – first turn of the key and all was good. Went to the club AGM. Started up again after sitting a few hours, no problem. The drama started on the way home. First thing I noticed was some hesitation above 3500 rpm and it bogged down and wouldn't rev. Odd. Then I found the indicators stopped working. Figured I may have blown a fuse. But the hazard lights worked – so maybe not then. Then pulling up at some lights about 2 k's from home it just died and then just clicking when I tried to restart. No red light suggesting the alternator had imploded.

Managed to push to the side of the road. Nice old dude came along in an old Corolla and offered to try and jump start me (I always carry jump leads now) but his car didn't seem to have the juice required (or it might be that my cables are shite). So he offered to go home and get a tow strap – at 11:30 at night, pretty cold by then. And then we have a towing incident where the strap snapped because I rolled up on it whilst we were moving because he braked better than my capability with the handbrake... so it destroyed some of my front Zender spoiler  .

So not a great night out. To top it off, the neighbour gets home from afternoon shift just as I am about to pull anything of value from the car because I have no juice to get up the drive way so was going to street park it and offers to try and jump start with some decent leads she has – was going to use her Honda Jazz but that has an adult-proof +ve batt terminal cover so I got my 156 out and used that to jump and the GTV6 fired up first crank. Only positive was that I didn't have to street park.

So from my tale of woe, I have some questions – the red alternator light works – I have seen it previously – what should I look for trying to hunt down if the alternator is dodgy? How many volts should I see across the battery at idle if the alternator is good?

Where does the spoiler attach to the front of the car? How tricky is a fibreglass repair – looking on YouTube looks OK but never done that kind of thing before so interested in first hand perspectives...
Cheers
Marty

[bazzbazz]

Ok, Alternators can fail and not trip the warning light on the dash.

Battery sitting in the car with engine off should be around 12.2V fully charged, with engine started and idling should be around 13.5-14V.

[four90s]

Hey Marty,

That's a bit of a bummer. What alternator are you using?
I've done a bit of fibre-glassing so I can help you out with it.

Regards
Steve

[martym00se72]

So last weekend I did some diagnostics and found the following:
Battery, straight after removing charger, not started - 13.5v
After starting - 12.5/6
After turning on stereo and fan - 12.4
After cranking stereo - 12.2
After turning on headlights - 12.0
After turning on high beam - 11.9

Conclusion - alternator not doing so great, the photo I have (too large to attach here) says why I suspect (scorched regulator etc - was able to upload the photo to AlfaBB)... and that is why it is out of the car and I am looking at options...

Just quietly, I think the back of the alternator is mostly due to my small fire at the start of the year - alternator has worked fine since, until now.

Spoiler is off - attachment wasn't all that solid so probably good to have it off to work out better attachment options too. Steve, I'll be in touch!