Dave Sullivan
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• Kitchener, XX, Canada |
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• Registered on 2/27/2003 |
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• 199 posts |
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 Posted:11/21/2003 11:37 |
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I notice that several people have or have had battery charging problems and alternator problems.
I had a problem with mine this fall. I got of work at 1 AM and Tinerbell would not start. Hell, I had no lights either. A call to CAA and I limped home.
Next day I discovered the gawd awfull price of alternators at $360 CDN. Waranty be damned.
Best price I could get was $200 CDN.
Well, the only thing left to do was do the job myself. I grit my teeth and popped the hood determined to do an autopsy on Tink's alternator.
First stop was to disconnect the wires....... and here lay the problem.
Heads up folks.
Ford uses a cheap steel crimp connection on the charging wire. Mine was burnt and the insulator on the alternator connection terminal was brittle.
Wait... theres more to the story. Some time ago when the ex was still kinda new, I noticed that the alternator charging wire was rubbing on the hood because it was too high and that it was running very hot. So I took Tink into the local ford dealer and said hey, check this out. something is wrong.
I had supposed that the wire gage was too small and that was why it was running hot.
The ford dealer rerouted the wire and put some plastic armour cable on the wire and said it was normal and ok. HMMM ok.. if you say so. Waranty if it burns right????
Later on , I started having charging problems. Kinda like the batterys were not good. This senerio continued to get worse till the 1AM episode.
So back to the autopsy. The Terminal has 2 nuts on it. one secures the insulator and the terminal to the alternator chassis and the other secures the charging wire to the terminal. In this case the first nut had not been tightened enough and the charging terminal was loose. Add to this, the poor crimp connection and you have Piss poor charging conditions for the batterys.
A little tightening and a new connector on the wire, some black tape and problem solved. The cost was a couple of bucks for the connector.
Check it out folks before you commit to a new alternator, Fords bullcrap waranty and you get stuck in no-where's ville at an inconvenient time because your EX's Batteries are starved. Keep in mind that EX = Tinkerbell = Truck.
 
Dave.
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