Ready for this one?

Topic: Ready for this one? (Read 3786 times) previous topic - next topic

Ready for this one?

June 20, 2019, 06:42:03 PM

Dead battery. No biggie. Got a jump box and cables. Pop the hood and jump it fires right up. Unhook the cable and she dies hmm... Check alt, plug wire totally melted. Try to up plug connector and both charge plugs from the alt break off.

Now I'm usually pretty well prepared. I even had spade connectors. Figures I was just gonna splice in a new spade connector so the battery would charge and then drive home.

The joys of daily driving a 30+ year old car I guess. Worst part, my work is 70 miles from the nearest town. 35 from cell service. So I use the gaurd shack phone and call the girl friend who's just getting off work.

Think I'm just gonna hook up the jumper cables till the battery is charged up then try to drive it back to the freeway. Then I can run home and grab a spare Alt off my 88 xr7 and try to get it home.

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #1 – June 21, 2019, 09:25:04 AM

You really are prepared!

What do you think caused the terminals to get that hot? Something shorted?

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #2 – June 21, 2019, 12:08:09 PM

3G swap it with a 95 amp 3.0 Aerostar alternator when you get the chance. Eliminate that 2G.

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #3 – June 22, 2019, 12:15:21 AM

I actually have a 3g from my 86 cougar. What's even funnier, I thought about putting it in when I got done with my head gasket a few weeks ago (busted head bolt, don't even get me started on that one.) But I decided I did enough work on the car that weekend.

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #4 – June 25, 2019, 10:03:46 PM

Yeah, that was a big problem for Ford. If I remember right, back in the day they had a replacement connector that "fixed" the problem. You'd cut off the old one like 3 inches back, and solder the new style one on, which had heaver gauge wires going into it and a more heat resistant type of plastic. Definitely a band-aid fix and I'm sure it's impossible to find now. But a 3G would fix so many problems.

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #5 – July 01, 2019, 12:25:32 AM

3g alt is a cheap good upgrade definitely recommend. ended up getting a new lifetime warranty one from my work for just $60

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #6 – July 01, 2019, 03:23:38 PM

Would not surprise me if the regulator stuck wide open and the battery got overcharged and died a miserable death as well. Haystack will let us know the carnage report.

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #7 – July 03, 2019, 04:34:21 AM

Just to echo what everyone else is saying, now is the time to do a 3G.

Plenty of car fires have happened from this same issue.

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #8 – July 04, 2019, 08:23:23 PM

So long story short, I grabbed the alt and a few inches if the alt plug from my 88xr7 then went to swap it all in, fully expecting the plug to be charred and melted. It wasn't.

The inside of the alt was full if burnt black . I literally just swapped the alt over, pulled the burnt Alt pins out of the connector and plugged it in. Afterword I was so pissed I just hucked the alt over next to a burnt up car in the dirt next to the freeway where I parked the car to work on it.

It was not the wiring, but something internal in the alt. Cut the alt plug off my car for no reason.

Then driving it home, the fan clutch failled and started vibrating rediculously bad. By the time I got off the highway (80 mph speed limit 13 miles between exits) it chewed three ribs off the belt and took a chunk out of the fan shroud.

Pulling over again, I removed the fan and cut all the long broken rubber strings off of the belt then drove it home.

Swapped the fan off my 88 Xr7 and got a new belt at AutoZone.

Then a few days later, I hit a pothole and had the most un satisfying thunk and metal on metal.

The ball joint came out. The $55 dollar lifetime warranty ball joint I put in past December. Get a new balljoint and the press, tear everything apart and the balljoint is oval, not round. It falls out of the a arm and the new one has zero resistance.

shiznitty $55 balljoint ruined my a-arm... Or maybe the 30 year old metal was just too worn out, either way.

So now I am going to order all new front end stuff, hopefully new rubber bushings and hopefully rebuild it all.

This whole daily driving a 30 year old $500 car is starting to get a bit annoying.

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #9 – July 05, 2019, 02:23:34 PM

Dude, what a bad run of luck! I guess it's a good idea to keep a donor car at all times. Yeah, at some point you may want to let it go into semi-retirement. I'm all about using a car up til it's got nothing left to give, but I guess there is a point where the money saved up front starts catching up with you. I've got an '86 Cougar (to be on the road soon, I hope), an '01 Expedition, an '02 Focus, '03 Ram 1500, and an '05 Mountaineer. I just calculated it; that comes to an average of 19.6 years old for my vehicles. And the Cougar has by far the lowest miles. Expy and Mountaineer are both 200k+. Ram and Focus are each in the 170k range. Cougar has 119k. Good luck!

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #10 – July 07, 2019, 03:23:29 PM

I don't think I've ever had a fan clutch fail to the point where it vibrated, so that's a new one.

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #11 – July 07, 2019, 10:25:17 PM

It happens. Had a customer bring an 87 Xr7 over for engine vibration that she said was shaking the steering wheel badly. She was about 18 miles away, I told her to tow it in because I was afraid it might be harmonic balancer. If its slipped bad enough to nearly falling off, it can ruin the crankshaft, not worth risk to drive it.

Once off the flatbed, I checked the balancer out and it looked nearly new like it had been recently replaced. But the clutch fan was so wobbly I dont think it would have gone another mile much less 18 without hurling itself thru the shroud, or radiator, or both. Installed new, engine revved smooth as glass.

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #12 – July 08, 2019, 11:00:27 AM

That's a lot of wrenching on a Daily Driver, .

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #13 – July 08, 2019, 05:58:37 PM

Quote from: Vintage – on July 07, 2019, 10:25:17 PM

It happens. Had a customer bring an 87 Xr7 over for engine vibration that she said was shaking the steering wheel badly. She was about 18 miles away, I told her to tow it in because I was afraid it might be harmonic balancer. If its slipped bad enough to nearly falling off, it can ruin the crankshaft, not worth risk to drive it.

Once off the flatbed, I checked the balancer out and it looked nearly new like it had been recently replaced. But the clutch fan was so wobbly I dont think it would have gone another mile much less 18 without hurling itself thru the shroud, or radiator, or both. Installed new, engine revved smooth as glass.

Huh. Never seen that one in person. Clutch was probably factory original.

Re: Ready for this one?

Reply #14 – July 08, 2019, 10:04:10 PM

Quote from: thunderjet302 – on July 08, 2019, 05:58:37 PM

Quote from: Vintage – on July 07, 2019, 10:25:17 PM
It happens. Had a customer bring an 87 Xr7 over for engine vibration that she said was shaking the steering wheel badly. She was about 18 miles away, I told her to tow it in because I was afraid it might be harmonic balancer. If its slipped bad enough to nearly falling off, it can ruin the crankshaft, not worth risk to drive it.

Once off the flatbed, I checked the balancer out and it looked nearly new like it had been recently replaced. But the clutch fan was so wobbly I dont think it would have gone another mile much less 18 without hurling itself thru the shroud, or radiator, or both. Installed new, engine revved smooth as glass.

Huh. Never seen that one in person. Clutch was probably factory original.

For some reason when they fail, they seem to act like a ball and socket. The one I just pulled off was acting like the center hub was mounted to a row of springs. You could push it down and it would bounce back up.

Usually when they fail, its all at once. I blew apart the fan shroud and fan on my 86 around 310k miles downshifting to merge on the freeway, and it didn't put a single ding in the radiator. Just had a super wobbly metal shaft sticking out of the water pump with broken plastic everywhere when I popped the hood.