Re: what the?????

["Khan M. Klatt" <kmk@pacificrim.net>]

At 2:56 AM -0400 7/5/98, MAOberer@aol.com wrote:
>Gang,
>   I was driving along last night minding my own business, not racing and then
>the battery light comes on.  So when i stop i take a look under the hood,
>check engine related fuses, all good.  So later on i got to drive it (still
>with battery light on) again with no problems and then as i am nearing home,
>the lights dim, the radio dies and the speedo and clock both go
>blank...starting to get a little worried now.  I try to rev it up above 3000
>in order to charge it and it resented that. Then i pulled it in the garage and
>it gave out...  I put the battery charger on it and the lights came on and it
>started after charging for a minute or so.
>   This may be a bonehead post on my part, but does it seem like I have a bad
>battery, alternator and/or voltage regulator?  Any one else have this problem?

Something similar happened to me just a week ago. Here's the story:

I started the car, but the lights were dimmed down a little when I turned
on my headlights. Earlier in the day I had my car into the dealer earlier
for my free car wash just because I stopped in to say "hi" (my dealer
rocks), so I figured the guys who were washing the car dimmed the inside
lights for some reason.

Well, when I tried to turn them up again, the dial wouldn't move, meaning
that the bulbs were dim, it wasn't the dimmer that was set low. I look at
the battery indicator, and sure enough, it's on. So I'm thinking maybe the
battery was drained, because maybe the car wash guys left the lights on? I
figure as long as the car started, I'll take it home, and take it into the
dealer the next morning while the car was still drivable.

I turned off the radio, my fogs, and dimmed the lights inside the car to
reduce the load on the alternator.

Well, as I'm driving home, the battery light would almost go out when the
car was between 2000 and 4000 rpm, meaning that at higher revs, the engine
was able to satisfy the thirst of my car's electricity needs. I thought
that if it was the battery, I'd just drive in second keeping the car at
3000 rpm rather than shift into third and bringing it back down to 2000 rpm
to "charge" the battery (I don't know if this was sound reasoning or not,
but that's what I did).

Next day I take it in, and yep, the alternator's bad. It was replaced under
warranty, but they had to keep it over the weekend. Second car wash in two
days, and my dealer is also a Jeep/Chrysler dealer, so I drove a Jeep Grand
Cherokee loaner for five days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and they
fixed it on Tuesday) I don't really like SUV's all that much, but they're
nice to drive for a few days every now and then. :)

-Khan

P.S. A suggestion to people out there who encounter a problem. As soon as
you first get a whiff of the problem, go out and actually get it
diagnosed/fixed right away. My last car was a Toyota Corolla, and I also
had an alternator problem with that one. Instead of taking the car in as
soon as I noticed a problem, I kept on driving it, figuring "I'll take it
in early next week". Well, because of that attitude, my car was stranded in
a city 90 miles away, and I had to have it towed 90 miles back home just to
get it fixed. Point is, if you get your car fixed as soon as it starts to
complain, you may prevent the problem altogether, and if not, you'll reduce
the odds of getting stranded because you drove the problem to a failure
point.