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Guy Fiero - The Electrics |
Pick One:
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Immediately after getting the headlight debacle sorted, a new problem emerged. The engine sounded like it had a supercharger. Now. I did drive the car. It most certainly does not have a supercharger. Which means I have a problem. Combined with a previous incident where the battery didn't start charging for a bit after the engine started, I was extremely suspicious of the alternator. This is extremely easy to confirm, so naturally I ignored it and continued driving the car what is WRONG with me?? Eventually, the noise could be ignored no longer. I loosened the bolt tensioning the alternator, loosened the V-belt, and gave it a spin. Immediately the alternator started
screeching horribly, confirming my theory. At this point, I have two options.
I can:
Rebuilding the alternator myself would save me quite a bit of money, however I was hesitant to do so because I didn't know if the previously mentioned incident was caused by the bearings, or something else. Eventually I decided to bite the bullet on a remanufactured unit from The Fiero Store, though I still wish I could've saved that money. It would've been quite useful, because the car also needs a new battery. The battery that it came with went through quite a bit of abuse during the repairs, being drained time and time again from either doors being left open or just being left to sit for the winter. I was hoping that maybe it would be okay, but unfortunately it's just barely clinging to life at this point. Maybe I can get a couple more weeks out of it. Another issue that should probably be taken care of is a bad body ground. I got quite lucky, the only major rust on the entire car is right next to the battery. Unfortunately, it is still major rust. There is a hole in the body, and the frame rail behind it is looking just a bit crusty. This is especially unfortunate, as that's where the body ground connects to. Lord only knows what sort of electrical issues that could be waiting to cause (or might be causing already). For electrical and mechanical stability, the entire surface will need to be cleaned down to bare metal, then sprayed with Fluid Film to prevent more rusting. When my parts came in, I started by dealing with the rust. I cleaned off the rust to expose some bare metal for the ground to attach to, then after reattaching the ground, coated the whole thing in Fluid Film to prevent further rust. I really expected this to change something, but I never noticed any differences. Next, I decided to tackle the alternator. This sucked. To remove the alternator, you have to get the car in the air and remove it from below. To do that though, you have to remove the oil filter and alternator mounting bracket. I performed all the labor, started the car, and the noise was still there. Either they had shipped me another bad alternator, or I went and replaced the wrong part. I decided that eventually the source of the noise will reveal itself in spectacular fashion, and chose to ignore it until then. At this point, the battery was really begging to be put out of its misery. In the mornings the car would barely start at all. So I popped down to the parts store and grabbed a new battery. However, when I went to return the old battery, I noticed something very interesting. Before returning the battery, I decided I would clean the years of grime off of it, so I'm not that asshole bringing dirty parts to the parts store. When I did this, it revealed a date sticker that I didn't even know the battery still had. Wanna guess when the battery was from? I promise it'll surprise you. AUGUST OF 2011 For posterity, I'll go ahead and mention that this part of the story takes place in June of 2026. That's right, this car has been running on a 15 YEAR OLD BATTERY. Insane.
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