Wouldn't ya know that the alternator in my new daily beater gave up the ghost last week..it started with what looked like an innocent wink as I backed intot he driveway before last weeks ice storm..but the day after when I'm 50 miles out from home the damm light comes on not five minutes into the trip on the way home..it's typical..light off at high ropm..then on at low..then on steady..then off steady then on after a couple of "f-u I'm not charging blinks"..and I'm running in heavy traffic with no lights, no radio, no heater..hitting the runs when I'm not on the brakes and all that power conserving crap..nursed it home thou with no voltage to spare ( battery reading 11.9 when I got home)
luckily I had a spare alternator in my stock, that was almost off an engine..just had to pull the wires ( bolts removed some time ago for reasons I can't recall)
did the jack the engine and pull the air valve routine to change it..managed not to cut myself or screw my back up worse then it is..only problem was it was bitter effing cold..I bought a new battery just for insurance ( the current one was about three years old)...whole thing was about 3 hours. ( including warm up time after every step..it was brutal cold with the wind)..I kick myself for not clearing my garage out ( Still stripping that junker)
so based on the last three I've done..looks like average life of an OEM alternator is about 200k miles..I'll venuture the brushes were work out..solid state voltage regulators just don't act flakey unless there is a connector problem, and the connector on this one looked like it had never been pulled..still had some of that old white grease on it)
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