So Driving back from the Heritage golf things last Thursday my battery light randomly comes on! It's still holding a charge the whole way home so I just let it sit. Well Friday when I leave I notice my voltmeter is a little low. No big deal, I'm in a rush. After leaving back for home Friday, it starts dropping, noticeably! I drop my friend off and try to start up... won't even crank! She gives me a jump and I barely make it home. I can't press the brake and have the turn signal on at the same time! Daig was a PAIN! so here's where it gets interesting. Started off with the brushes, they were definitely bad (orignal, 215k miles) Still not charging so I got new Regulator, didnt' fix it. Finalyl broke down and spent the 200 on a new alt. STILL didnt' fix it. I'm frustrated beyond belief by now! I'm a carpenter, not an electrician so this stuff doesn't come easy. I've checked every bloody fuse I know of and then some. Still nothing I Pour over the haynes manual and after a few hours of tracing diagrams, I find there's this 20 amp mini fuse up on the firewall behind the battery! Lo and behold.. the sucker is burnt out! THREE DAYS I spend trying to fix this thing... and it's a lil 50 cent fuse. Now don't THAT make ya wanna pull your hair out!

 

about enough to **** off the pope!

 

if you got 200k miles on an alternator, you were due anyway... you should always check voltage output to the battery before changing the alternator... but you were due. with that many miles, its not a good plan to just do brushes or regulator, the commutator is probably real thin and rough... Good to get a new one.

 

Well the fuse on the firewall usually blows when the alternator shorts out anyway, so you needed the alternator anyway. That little fuse was only used one or two years and they moved it to the fuse box where it belongs. It did confound a lot of folks, even a few techs in the early days of this model.