Battery Warning Light II

[meangreenLXi]

:werd: Does anyone know why it took a month for my battery warning light to come on and warn me that something was wrong with my charge system. The problem was that some idiot(Conglomorate Muffler shop) forgot to put my engine block ground wire back on. I had several jobs done to my engine in the last month. Stereo wired in, valve cover gasket replaced(my suspected culprit) and tune up w/battery preventive maintenance.
One of these businesses took off my engine ground and didn't replace it and I finally got the flashing light about 3weeks to a month later when I was trying to race one of my buddies.
I believe after the groundwire was off, a couple of other service people saw my car and nobody recognized the missing ground to the engine. The tune up and battery maintenance should have revealed this problem. Did it, because soon after their diagnostic, they were telling me it was my alternator and that i should change it and get one of the ones that they sell.
Long story short after replacing the ground wire to my engine block, because I saw someone's engine here on the :bow: almighty 3GEEZ.COM, with the wire going to the third bolt on the valve cover, my car is now normal. I was a day and $250 away from getting the new alternator and new battery. I bought my current alt and battery four months ago. I was told they were bad by a Conglomorate auto service center out to make money(I'll leave Manny, Moe and Jack out of this :flipa: )but it was only my engine ground missing.
What I wanna know is with the ground wire off the engine block, why did the car not signal the battery warning light immediately?:stick:

[cruznz]

Originally posted by meangreenLXi
What I wanna know is with the ground wire off the engine block, why did the car not signal the battery warning light immediately?:stick: [/B]

I'll take a shot at this,.....my guess is,alternator was probably ok for awhile,...but because the return path for the alt was insufficent,the alt may have been overcharging which possibly caused a regulator or diode fault

[meangreenLXi]

So does that mean that my alt is still bad? and that I should replace it and/or my battery?

[NXRacer]

I've had some WEIRD things happen when i forgot to replace that wire. When i tried to turn on my lights my tach needle would jump and my clock would flash on an off when the car was on. All my other gauges were dead. I thought i had seriously f**ked things up but then i looked and saw the wire was off.

I'd just take your rig down to a battery place and they can do a free alt/battery check to see if its still good.

[meangreenLXi]

Cool, I'll do that because once the flashing light was gone I just figured that it was all good, but I wanna be sure before I get caught out some where.