290,000 miles later

Topic: 290,000 miles later (Read 2889 times) previous topic - next topic

290,000 miles later

January 19, 2016, 11:03:06 PM

the alt goes out first week of last dec. some eyes on it seem to believe it was original.. maybe it was but......... who knows.

Im on i80 in pa near dubois when im suddenly on battery. I run for a few more miles to limp into an exit to the point i believe every amp left the building.

call my installers to come help and they do, they stop by advance and buy an alternator and bring it all the way over to me 60 miles away.
I get it out and ,, advance database is wrong because im holding v6 alternator,, its clocked wrong but who cares, i make it fit and work.
this is what they call a brand new alternator by advance for the record.

last week i start hearing a noise that sounds like a ball bearing rattle but i have no ball bearings in my car!

towards the end of the week it sounds worse.
I start my drive home end of last week and the predominant noise you hear from my car at 50foot at idle is metal clanking under the hood. By this time i have already discovered what the problem is because im not over heating, i have good voltage and im holding oil and all is well.

long story short the nut that holds the pully on my alt flew off some time ago i guess so what we have here is a pully just riding on the alt shaft spinning its ass off with the shaft kinda following the pully. im guessing there is some lag time in the shaft catching up. the serpentine belt and all the other roundy turns and bends along with my tensioner is all that is basically keeping the pulley in check and staying put. I decide to take it down the road the needed 420 miles to get home.

so i make it home, call my local advance and they tell me that "since im going back up to pa next week that i might want to get it turned in up there. i tell them i don't want to do that,, you know buy another alternator here in WV & pay full lprice but go haggle with the PA advance. They told me that since i bought it from that store which in some sorta kahootz with carquest for this alternator, that its a difficult store to store transfer process.

being as its such pleasurable weather outside i go clunking over to autozone and buy their alt then clunk back home to change it out over the weekend.

i return back to autozone to get my 15$ core back and ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, she hands me 89$.

basically she decided to provide me with a warranty that the other competitor would not do. I felt bad and told her no,, but she said its all done and in the system already so don't argue.

so i handed her and the helper there 20$ ea,, went to magic mart and got another pair of jeans, bought myself a pack of cigs , coffee and peanut M&Ms and headed home. the trip costed me nothing but gas....... and i am even more impressed with autozone and i am disappointed more and more now a days with advance. i have nearly 30 years of receipts with advance showing my loyalty but some changes they must have been having over the past 5 or so years have basically caused me to use advance as a last resort anymore.

290,000 miles later

Reply #1 – January 19, 2016, 11:09:05 PM

This is how it has been for me here as well. I go to salt lake for parts, they don't fit or are . I end up getting a part at a smaller store or local chain and they go way above and beyond.

Throw a 3g alt in it. Best upgrade I've done, short of the t-5. 90 amps at idle 160 peak.

290,000 miles later

Reply #2 – January 19, 2016, 11:19:00 PM

yeah,, tell me about it,, i should have had a 3g on this 20th way long ago.

290,000 miles later

Reply #3 – January 19, 2016, 11:28:47 PM

I jump started a dual battery f-350 that left his head lights on overnight the other day. With my 4 guage cables and biggest battery that can fit and 3g, he was able to start the truck in 30 seconds.

290,000 miles later

Reply #4 – January 20, 2016, 02:28:50 PM

Quote from: jcassity;453445

yeah,, tell me about it,, i should have had a 3g on this 20th way long ago.

Do it. I finally put a 3G on my Thunderbird this past summer. At idle in park (~700rpm) it puts out 14.2 volts with the A/C, stereo, and headlamps on. No way in hell would the old 2G do that.

290,000 miles later

Reply #5 – January 20, 2016, 03:20:13 PM

I have a funny alternator story from years ago - it was in my very first Thunderbird, in fact. My (ex) girlfriend and I had driven to her mother's (150 miles away) for a visit. By the time we left it had gotten dark and started raining. About 30 miles into the trip home the battery light came on, the wipers slowed down, the blower got quieter and the headlights got dim. I stopped to take a look and discovered that wonderful Ford 2G power wire connector had disintegrated. We were miles from anything, and this was before cell phones were common, so I could only soldier on. Thankfully the rain stopped. The blowe fan was turned off. I did every thing I could to coax the last volt out of that battery. Another 30 or so miles and the digital speedo started malfunctioning. The headlights were a dull orange. I "latched" onto a car ahead and shut them off. Eventually the digital speedo quit entirely. I basically had just enough juice to run the coil (the car was carbureted). Made it another 30 or so miles. The car was starting to run poorly at this point, and the car I was following was getting further and further away. Eventually I caught a glimmer of a cop car's door in the median. As soon as I passed the cop car his lights came on, so I pulled over and the car immediately died. The cop came up to my window and wanted an explanation, so I told him the car was breaking down. He started laughing and told me about why he pulled me over: the car ahead of him went by, but his radar was still showing something coming. He could hear something coming, but he could not see something coming. He said he just caught a glimmer of my door in his headlights as I went by - if my car has been flat black he'd never have even seen me. He was glad he finally saw me because he thought he was going crazy. He then asked why I was going 108 km/hr, and I told him "Because the car ahead of me was doing 110, and I was trying too keep up. My speedo wasn't working so I had no idea how fast I was going. Again he laughed. He said "You know I can't let you keep going, right?" To which I replied "That's ok, it's dead now so that's not possible anyway."

He ended up giving me a $60 ticket for driving with no lights on, but agreed not to have the car towed and also drove me to town, which was OK of him...

290,000 miles later

Reply #6 – January 20, 2016, 04:45:57 PM

Quote from: Thunder Chicken;453463

He said "You know I can't let you keep going, right?" To which I replied "That's ok, it's dead now so that's not possible anyway."

That's a hoot...

290,000 miles later

Reply #7 – January 20, 2016, 07:40:35 PM

When I was working in Montana, I accidentally left my lights on. We finished the job that was supposed to take months in 11 days on, 6 days off, and then 9 days. The last night we celebrated at a small bar in the same parking lot as the hotel. I had driven the car acrossed the parking lot and sat in it to smoke, as it was -18 or so, Montana in March, 12 miles from the Canadian border was no joke. I ended up falling asleep in the car after I shut it off, but I guess I left the head lights or stereo going. I pulled up a work truck and jumped it. The jumper cable leads had been replaced, and apparently backwards. I sat in the work truck to warm up, went to start my car and no lights. Nothing happened when I turned the key.

I popped the hood and checked the battery with a volt meter and got -12.38. At that point I realized what had happened. Checked the fuseable links and sure enough, they were blown. I popped the battery back in backwards and checked fuses. My negetive terminal was now my positive. Every single fuse was blown. I went to a truck stop (only thing open at 4 am) and bought two packs of 5 30 amp fuses, then only ones on the shelf. I replaced all of the fuses and had no wire or anything to replace the fuseable links. Really worried I fried all the electrical, I cut the loose wire for the under hood light and spliced it in to the two main fuses with electrical tape and twisting the wires together just to check voltages and see if the dash would light up.

To my surprise, everything seemed to work expect for the alt. It wasn't charging. By 5 am the grocery store opened up. The didn't have a single wire or fuse in the auto section. Not even cheap small guage jumper cables or even audio cable in electronics. Right as I was about to give up, I saw Christmas lights and green electrical extension cords for Christmas lights in the discount bin section. I bought a "heavy duty" 14 or 16 guage extension cord for $1.99 and wired it up. I doubled up the cord and spliced it in-between my 10 guage alt charging cable. It got me all 1300 miles home. A few weeks later I replaced the fuseable link harness and all the fuses and it was as good as new.

I was s****ing bricks first time I fired the car up. Everyone else was a Montana native and I was driving all 1300 miles home by myself. I was really worried when I flipped the lights on and everything worked.

290,000 miles later

Reply #8 – January 23, 2016, 06:59:43 PM

What are retarded policy and cop

You were breaking down so what's the problem

290,000 miles later

Reply #9 – February 08, 2016, 12:28:03 PM

Reading these stories makes me miss my thunderbird a bit. I spend 5 years working on it, doing things like this just to get by.

Never thought it'd miss it, but 4 years later, I still occasionally look at them. My first project car, and it was always "cheap" to fix. My 1972 Cutlass, although more fun and faster, super expensive, and only gets 12mpg. Oh man, to go back in time......

I too, once had to drive home with a failing alternator. I was heading into the city(Boston) for a Celtics game with the 'One that got away'. At the toll booth the car started to fail. I had a booster back in the trunk, so I ran an extension cord from the guard shack to the booster back in the lot, which I put on my battery. It worked, because when I left, the car started, I drove with only headlights(no heat, no radio, etc) back home at 1:00am. I locked out OD the entire trip home, ran that little 3.8 up like an 8 day clock to get some juice out of the alternator. I made it home. The girl was impressed with my resourcefulness.