Mobile In Maine | Forum

Looks like it's my turn now. I'll see what I can do, but don't hold your breath :)

I know, some of the things I write seem so pointless. I just like writing I guess.

So last winter I noticed the battery icon lit up on the display, a sign of decreased power output from the alternator so I cut back a bit on the power consumption and it went away.

Early Saturday morning I'm at the gas station a couple miles up the road after being up all night; repositioning tire weights and getting ready to leave, and the car died.

That was all she wrote and it wouldn't start; the alternator had gave out completely. Not much of a break between projects. I just literally had put the front dirt guard back on.

Looks like we will installing a new alternator, pronto, and THEN get back to balancing the tires, again. It's about the same price as the radiator, a buck and a quarter.

Luckily didn't have to have the car towed, the dude from AAA hooked up a pack and I was just barely able to get back to the house on battery power.

Gotta keep the ride in tip top condition for more marvelous adventures. Hope everything gets finished soon so you can hit the road. :)

Yeah it looks like I'll be starting on it tomorrow, although if I make it outside before dark I'll have a look about getting the old one out. The AAA guy was off a little on the price, listed at around 150 for a rebuilt or 200 for new, but it might also come down to what they have in stock.

I'm leaning towards the rebuilt one since I only plan on another 1 - 2 years for that car, but who knows.

Looks like the place within walkin' distance only has the rebuilt one in stock, which is good because we hate waiting for shit and that's the one I was gonna get anyway.

Been raining a bit here today, but in spite of that, the next procedure is to hook up a pack to that 4,000 lbs of dead weight to garner enough power to get that bitch on some ramps.

Then have a look at those two bolts on the bottom in conjunction with releasing the tensioner at some point enough to slide the belt off the alternator. Hopefully the bottom bolts will break as easily as the top one.

I was hoping to do everything topside like others have done, but in my particular configuration it was difficult to get my hand down in there enough to even feel the bolts, maybe I just have big hands, I dunno.

So we jump the car onto the ramps and take the forward dirt guard off, once again, while observing a chipmunk making use of the rations I put out for them and being informed that my friend has made a video documentary out of the finches nest that I told her to stay away from.

Still raining off and on, this is the off part.

The break extended beyond the 'off' part; it's raining pretty good out there now.

So the two bolts on the bottom of the alternator appear to be more petrified than the one on the top, and one more so than the other. So we soak them with PB Blaster and let them chill for a few. The effectiveness of that stuff is only marginal, so hopefully they aren't too petrified.

Breaking Bolts

Anyone who has ever done any plumbing or heavy mechanical work has to deal with big bolts. Not usually a problem, but after years of being subjected to the elements, salty air and water or for whatever reason they may not age well and become rusted, corroded, as if to be fused or sealed in place to the point of breaking with attempted removal as opposed to the usual CCW threaded removal.

The bolt is sealed in place and needs to be 'broken', but not literally. This is the kind of thing we have been dealing with lately, welcome to the world of bolt breaking, the alternator has three and all have been 'broken', as far as I can tell, so tomorrow we get introduced to the 'belt tensioner' so as to remove the 'serpentine' belt from the alternator so we can eventually get it out and trade it in towards a rebuilt one.

So we put the car off for most of the day believing the difficult stuff to be out of the way; little did I know that my quarter inch drive, would not fit in between the fan assembly and the port, in which it needs to arrive.

So we face the reality of removing the fan to get to the port; removing two bolts and things of the sort.

Tomorrow is a new day, usually, but past resembling future is a matter of convention within this wonderful and wicked invention.

Heard it's supposed to rain today, and it does look a bit that way at the moment, but we got the fan assembly out so we now have clear access to that quarter inch drive port on the belt tensioner when we get 'round to it.

And as far as the rain, well, I always got this place if worst comes to worst.

Looks like rain again today. Progress is slow, but consistently good, and satisfying.

Car Talk on a Satanic forum continued

So once we got some stuff out of the way we had clear access to the belt tensioner. The quarter inch drive fits in the port, but didn't seen to have a pipe to go over that for leverage, so I clamped a big pair of vice grips on the end of the ratchet instead which worked but I still had to muscle it pretty good with my right arm while simultaneously removing the belt from the alternator with my left.

Went out yesterday afternoon to start removing the other of the two bottom alternator bolts but it started raining so I came back in and posted another rain song. Took a walk today in the early evening to get some errands out of the way and came back to work on that other bolt. Got it out about a quarter inch and it started getting a bit tight so I stopped and applied more PB(petrified bolt) Blaster. The last turn felt almost like a slip and the last thing I wanted to do was round off the bolt, so we let that set overnight and resume tomorrow.

...and in the meantime, party on SIN.

Yeah that's the protocol, boss :)

In it for the long haul.