No electrical power after jump

[lxi89sedan]

Backstory - car is an 89 Lxi sedan. Roughly a month ago I had a charge light and i got an all new alternator and battery. Everything seemed fine until about week ago when I started to get a charge light at high rpms, which went away when i went to under 2500-3000. Brought it to a mechanic, he said voltage at the alt and battery was fine. Fast forward to today, I get a check engine light and 2 minutes later the car dies. I try to restart it and there is 0 electrical power. Like so little that I cannot get the lights to popup or the hazards to flash. I tried to jump it and nothing happened at all, in fact I couldn't even get the windows to go down. Any ideas as to what the problem is?

[Dr_Snooz]

Cheapo rebuilt alternator from Kragen/O'Reilly/Autozone/Advance/etc.

[lostforawhile]

voltage at the alternator and battery means nothing if the alternator isn't charging with enough current, probably the cheap voltage regulators they put in for rebuilds, have you checked the battery connections to make sure they are tight?

[Ayeobe]

Sounds like it was over charging, dosnt it? Should check the wire going between the alt and batt, and the wires coming off the batt.

[lostforawhile]

you get the charge light at higher rpms because they do very poor rebuilds on these cheap alternators, it probably has the original brushes, they may make contact fine at lower rpms but not higher ones. As the brushes wear, they get shorter and shorter, this means less spring tension to hold them against the commutator, when this happens at higher rpm they just skim the surface instead of making good contact. the alternator probably wasn't charging enough, so the battery got weaker and weaker, and is finally dead, a voltage reading on what the battery is at now would be helpful

[lxi89sedan]

you get the charge light at higher rpms because they do very poor rebuilds on these cheap alternators, it probably has the original brushes, they may make contact fine at lower rpms but not higher ones. As the brushes wear, they get shorter and shorter, this means less spring tension to hold them against the commutator, when this happens at higher rpm they just skim the surface instead of making good contact. the alternator probably wasn't charging enough, so the battery got weaker and weaker, and is finally dead, a voltage reading on what the battery is at now would be helpful

That makes perfect sense actually. Voltage was 12.75 immediately after startup, dropping to 12.45 when i put the headlights on.

[Dr_Snooz]

Buy your electric parts from Napa. They aren't perfect, but they're better. Better yet, buy a Denso or Beck/Arnley alternator from Rock Auto. Another possibility is Autozone. I bought an OEM rebuilt alternator for my truck from them just a couple weeks ago. They had two options. One was Chinese garbage, the other was OEM. More expensive, obviously, but worth it. They can tell from their system who the rebuilder is. If it isn't Denso, then walk away.

[lxi89sedan]

Is it easy enough for me to swap out the brushes? I took the old alternator apart briefly to look and it looks like it wouldn't be too difficult. I was looking at part number ECH E601 on NAPA's website.

[lostforawhile]

Is it easy enough for me to swap out the brushes? I took the old alternator apart briefly to look and it looks like it wouldn't be too difficult. I was looking at part number ECH E601 on NAPA's website.
make sure that's it, it's more then likely the problem, or the voltage regulator,

[lxi89sedan]

Old alt had charge light on at low rpms and would go off at high which seems to indicate brushes. I feel like there's not that much that can go wrong with an the alt; it looks fairly simple when I opened it up. If I did fix it and take it to autozone/napa/whatever for their alternator test, are they fairly accurate and would be able to tell me if it was ok?

[lxi89sedan]

Got the brushes this morning at NAPA. The plan right now is for me to bring both alts (old and new) to a repair place locally that's supposed to be fairly decent to see if they can make one decent one out of them. I checked grounds this morning and they looked alright. I'm trying to figure out right now what went wrong on the old one. How far is the magnet supposed to stick out of the housing? And is there anyway to test a regulator stand alone?

[lxi89sedan]

Didn't have a chance to get to the rebuild place today. I did however pull both alt apart and got a nice surprise when I took a took a look at the brushes. They're sideways on the rebuilt one I got on ebay. Great lesson there.

http://img807.imageshack.us/img807/6278/img2011080200229.jpg

wheres a good place for me to get a new brush assembly?

[lostforawhile]

the brushes are spring loaded and will pop out if not installed right, there is normally some sort of hole in the brush holder assembly, you insert a pin,needle or something to hold the brushes back, install the armature, then pull the pin to release the brushes against the commutator. if you need a regulator, i have a known good carb regulator, i can't remember if you had FI or carb, I converted to a civic alternator

[lxi89sedan]

Appreciate the offer, but my car is FI. I decided today to just bite the bullet and buy a NAPA rebuild, an hour later car runs fine after the jump. Alternator replacement isnt hard at all, it took me like a quarter of the time it did last time. Thanks for all the input everyone.

[lostforawhile]

Appreciate the offer, but my car is FI. I decided today to just bite the bullet and buy a NAPA rebuild, an hour later car runs fine after the jump. Alternator replacement isnt hard at all, it took me like a quarter of the time it did last time. Thanks for all the input everyone.
you need to bring the battery back up with a charger, if you don't it's going to damage, or severely shorten the life of your new alternator, they ARE NOT designed to bring a totally dead battery back