in all my years as a mechanic i have never seen this seqeunce of events take place for no apparent reason. i park my truck at lowes, no problems at all, starts up fine when i leave, no previous signs of impending doom, park it for about an hour at the jobsite, come back to start it and nothing, no lights, solonoid clicking, flat out absolutely nothing, i procede to check the battery, 8 volts, and thought damn, that shit drained fast,

so i jumped it, let the donor car run for a few minutes to charge it before i started mine, and when i did, the alternator lit up like a saturn V rocket on takeoff. aparently, for no reason from just sitting there, the battery dropped a cell, and when i started it, the current caused a dead short in the battery and fried the alternator, luckily there was no electronics damage, but i did have to clip the battery cable with a pair of tin snips to keep from frying everything.

never before have i seen or heard of a battery performing flawlessly and then while parked, decide to have a massive internal short.

5/29/2006 9:37:21 PM

Shit happened on my beretta a couple years back.

5/29/2006 10:17:53 PM

Don't reckon the alternator's rectifier shit the bed and pulled the battery down and then when you cut it on, the internal short in the alternator's field coils (due to diode breakdown) caused everything to light up when energized?

5/30/2006 12:45:10 AM

no, the battery definately had a dead cell, i checked for that, tryed charging the battery from the car with the terminal off at first, then connected it to see if there was a spark, and there wasn't, and the battery would never really charge, i just figuered it would last long enough for me to make it to the store to get a new one

5/30/2006 6:34:11 AM