Radio/Turn signals/Battery

[sblake01]

.....My dad had told me how to find out the alternator was bad,you take the + off if the car dies it's bad.......

That's actually an old test that was common back when cars had generators instead of alternators. Even so, your dad has it wrong. It's the negative cable you remove, not the positive. The negative cable is always the first removed whenever you disconnect a battery for any reason. That being said, this should never be done on a car with an alternator while the car is running for the above mentioned reasons and a few more. There are proper tests for an alternator.

[Mikes Z car]

A battery lead on my first 240 (a 71) disconnected itself inside the battery one afternoon in the parking lot as I tried to go home from work so I had to have the car jumped to get it going. The car was stock electrically including the voltage regulator. I noticed the trouble light (not sure what light I was seeing- long time ago) was pulsing at a constant speed due to the rectified sine wave current at low RPM coming from the alternator with no battery to smooth the voltage out. Off idle the flickering stopped. I drove slowly and deliberately home to replace the battery as I did not want to kill the engine in traffic knowing I could not restart. Guess I was lucky in that situation as I made it home with no problem though my experience might not have been typical. Other cars like mine or other cars with different regulators might not have fared as well. That 240 never once let me down for getting me somewhere.

Mike

[EScanlon]

Mark (260zinsd): no need to quote the complete post when replying. It IS helpful at times, but when the discussion is pretty linear (i.e. question, answer, question, answer) and you're not getting 23 responses for each question, the extra text from the quote can prove annoying and wastes both server and page space. When you ARE getting 23 responses, then just copy the salient points, or as I did, address it to the individual.

Mike (mikes z car): Don't know what kind of 240 you were driving with a trouble light that would pulse as you mentioned, unless you mean the one in the engine bay and you were driving without a hood. To my knowledge, none of the 240's had an alternator light, they all had an Ammeter.

But, your explanation does have a certain air to it....

What's the expression, if you can't dazzle with brilliance.... Sorry, couldn't resist, no offense intended.

E

[Mikes Z car]

EScanion,

The 71 240 I had back then was stock, wish I still had it. The hood was up after the jump. I turned on the trouble light in anticipation I now remember as I was wondering if I could see the pulses and sure enough I could see them. When I revved it a bit from under the hood the pulses stopped. That 240 had an ammeter gauge like the 240 I have now.

Mike

[260zinsd]

New alternator $32.00 whole dollars.

Now every thing is working great,even the RPM gauge is working .Sweeeeet.

[hogie]

Good deal on getting everything working. Mk1888's post about touching the positive post made me laugh though. I would be dead a million times over if that was the case. In fact I would've killed myself twice yesterday.

My old hydraulic set-up would only shock you a little bit if you were soaking wet and it was running 48 volts!

[MK1888]

Just because you haven't hurt yourself yet doesn't make it a good idea.