Hi all, i recently changed my brothers altenator in his daewoo laganza. i jumped the car to get it started and it started. drove it for a few then parked it. my brother came to pick it up and it wouldnt start. it seems as if the battery connection was going in and out. but the battery tested good at pepboys. please help..
Drove it for a few what? If you only drove it for a minute or two, you may not have charged the battery enough for even one start. Charge the battery fully on a battery charger and then see what happens. Also verify that the alternator is charging (battery voltage over 13.7ish volts when you start the engine)
good luck
nate
Right. He had to jump start it to get it going after the alternator change. It ran fine. Then he shut's it off with a dead battery and expects it to start. Alternators are not magic. And what the hell does "driving a few" mean? Maybe the battery got killed from the bad alternator in the first place. Maybe your connections or cables are bad. Too many maybe's here and not enough testing with simple equipment. PS. I intentionally discounted the Pepboy's test.
If you jump start a car without a connected battery (battery voltage over 14.5V ) then go a few miles, the ECU could pop a few capacitors and it shouldn't be able to start. Is it cranking?
Common mistake here. Alternators aren't designed to charge dead batteries. They are there to keep the battery charged. The difference is state of battery charge when the alternator is installed. It should be fully charged, otherwise you run the risk of burning a new alternator up.
That said ... perhaps the battery is bad (has a dead cell or something but has a surface charge so it wasn't detected at poop boys ... or worse, whoever did the testing didn't know what they were doing) and that is what killed the first alternator.
Did you clean the battery terminals? Is there excessive corrosion built up on them? Lots of things to check here ... and it's even possible that the alternator you took off wasn't bad.
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