where is the alternator?

Hello,

Sorry to hear about the layoff.

The fan blades are most likely for the engine fan itself unless these are pretty small blades that can be seen through a metal casing. The other item with AL tubes going in and out is the A/C compressor.

You know the alternator will be belt-driven and we've eliminated the A/C compressor. So, you have the water pump, power steering pump and finally, the alternator. The water pump is kind of small, and is usually on the intake side of the engine. Also, the power steering pump is located near the rear as well. It will have a large pulley on it and have a "can" on top with a cap.

Lastly, there's the alternator. If I'm not mistaken, on this engine it will be almost right next to the exhaust manifold. It normally has a small pulley in relation to the actual size of the alternator. There should also be fairly large cables running to it.

I strongly suggest you get a manual for your car, either Haynes or Chilton (bring on the flames).

Now, if you want to test this bad boy, here's what you do:

Start the car (if you can), let it warm up if you want.

Then, with a voltmeter, measure the voltage at the battery. Usually, it's around 13.8V.

Next, turn on everything you can; heater, lights (high beams), radio, etc. Measure the voltage again. Since you've put a pretty substantial load on the electrical system, the alternator will put out a higher voltage to compensate, so this time it should be around 14.5V.

If it's not, it's time to suspect a flakey alternator.

Fortunately for you, it's most likely made by NipponDenso which is the absolute best. While most people would shell out $50-100 for a new one, you can spend $7 on new brushes and it'll be as good as new!

I'll save the brush replacement process for another time...

-Tim

Approximately 8/24/03 14:27, Tom Johnson uttered for posterity:

Well, software engineers should never be allowed near hardware, or even to posess a screwdriver.....

The alternator will be distinguished by the fact that it has wires on it. One of these will be to the battery. Since I doesn't has a prism, dunno if the alternator is also how you add tension to the fan belt on that car.

First make sure the fan belt is tight, as if not, the alternator won't be turned properly and can't charge.

Make sure the connections at the battery are tight and clean. You shouldn't be able to move them at all unless you are bigger than Rambo.

Then borrow a cheap voltmeter and hook it across the battery. It should read about 12 to 12.5 volts if charged. If not charged, see if a friend can jump it for you for half an hour or so and charge it up. If you can't get it to 12 volts that way, the battery is suspect. Try borrowing one and just hook the cables to it and see if that works.

If it looks like the battery is OK, start the car and run the engine up to at least 1500 RPM, at which point you should see something more like 13-14 volts at the battery. If not, check for tight connections at the alternator. They do fail, but more often just loose connections or dying battery.

Don't buy either without testing.

If you decide to replace the alternator you should first disconnect the negative wire from the battery to prevent shorting out something.

L>

A little more precision is needed here. A battery reading 12 V at 80 degrees F would have a 25% charge. 12.5 V would be about 85%. That is an awfully big range. For conventional testing, I would recommend 12.4 V or better.

Agreed

...but a lot of auto parts stores (Advance Auto and I think Autozone, along with some NAPA outlets) will bench-test any alternator you bring in, at no charge to you. The reason is rather obvious--if you've got a known-bad alternator in your hands in an autoparts store, you're probably going to buy another one. So once you get the alternator out, you might want to see if you can bring it in to one of the local parts outlets for testing.

As others have noted, it may not be the alternator that's going bad-- belt tension, battery/alternator cables, and the battery itself can all give similar results (I had a Jetta with an intermittently connected alternator positive cable, and I actually replaced the alternator first because the cable looked OK until I bumped it and it fell out of the cable terminal...that would've been an expensive\ mistake, but I ended up needing the alternator anyhow). If the alternator is on its way out but works OK at higher RPM ranges, you might want to get in the habit of revving just a little at stopsigns and lights...hopefully nobody will think you're trying to race, and you might be able to buy yourself a little time to get a manual and make sure you have all the right tools before you take anything apart.

Wouldn't doubt that at all on that model. Load compensation is very common on the Asian vehicles. Chryslers sometimes do it with a timing adjustment.

I wouldn't normally be this rude, but you opened the door with your rude first comment. I'm not a software engineer by the way...

I know you were trying to help, but why try to give advice on where the alternator is when you're either confused yourself or just don't know exactly where because you've never been under the hood of his particular model car? Your troubleshooting ideas are generally right, but my comments are added below...

The A/C compressor will also have wires coming from it. There's no fan belt on most any transverse mounted engined car (mostly front wheel drive, but some rear wheel drive cars have electric fans now too).

The alternator will usually have a fan on it to cool it as the process of generating electricity does create some heat.

Tight is relative. Usual proper tension is measured by how much you can easily push the belt right in the middle between two pulleys. If you can move it under an inch it's probably ok, but there different designs for these belts and everybody's specs are a little different. If it doesn't squeel while driving you probably shouldn't try to tighten it.

Good advice for a layman--try to put your hands on the power source.

Better advice might be to disconnect them, wearing gloves or being extremely careful, and clean them if there's any visible dust on them and they're not bright. A batter terminal cleaner typically costs less than a dollar. Alternatively, sand paper or steel wool could be used, you just have to make sure you don't give the battery a chance to shock you.

Approximately 8/29/03 14:25, Bob Hetzel uttered for posterity:

And you probably have a point there somewhere.... well hidden BTW.

And the point being, since you mention the accessory drive belt later...?

Hmmm, aren't you the person criticizing vague advice? If the belt isn't tight enough it *will* slip, causing both glazing of the belt and poor alternator drive. And you may not be able to hear it over other background engine noise. And some belts have a lower than one inch spec... the one on my particular engine for example.

Well, you may not be a software engineer, but you aren't much of an electrical one either. Or are you making the laughable claim that the 12-14 volts of a car battery is somehow dangerous? Or will under pretty much any reasonable circumstance present a shock hazard?

It's not voltage that is dangerous, but current and 50-plus amps is more than enough to kill you. As a for instance, the shock you get when touching a door knob(or whatever) is in the thousands of volts -- annoying yes, deadly no.

Without the voltage to push it through the load (and dry, intact skin has quite a high resistance - depending on health, local conditions, and a few other things, including exactly where the probe is put, it might be anywhere from 100K Ohms on up into the millions of Ohms) you have no current. Period. A battery *CAN* supply 50 amps (and more) but getting that 50 amps to go anywhere/do anything through 100K Ohms is quite a task with only 12 volts of "push".

Unless you have a wet, open wound, or touch the terminals with a nail that's driven into your flesh, a car battery has about as much chance of giving you a shock you can feel (let alone die from) as I do of winning the world heavyweight boxing championship. As in, "Although it's possible that I *COULD* crawl into the ring with the champ, and through some unexplainable freak sequence of events, land a punch at the same moment he has a heart attack then stand back and watch him get counted out, I sure as hell wouldn't place any bets on it happening!"

Aside from contact with an open wound, or a conductor punched through the skin to the "wet" tissue, little or nothing is going to come of handling a car battery's terminals. But that's just reality, so don't let it ruin your little fantasy.

I'd suggest that before you make more of a fool of yourself in a public forum like this, you go read (or re-read, if neccesary) about a little gem called "Ohm's Law".

Approximately 8/30/03 09:02, Emmet Cummings uttered for posterity:

Ahhh, but the problem with this is that a 12v car battery can really generate more on the order of *hundreds* of amps. However it can only do this into a fairly low resistance. It can't even generate as much as *one* amp into the considerably higher resistance of the human body with an intact skin. Can't even generate dangerous current into a wet human skin.... And generating *any* measurable current into a human body is extremely difficult at DC frequency when you touch only *one* of the battery electrodes. Not sure what the agenda here is, but you are spreading extremely silly misinformation needlessly.

How did you know about my car-battery-electocution fantasy? Must've been a Freudian slip somewhere.

Gees, and I thought 'Ohm' was just a meditation chant. Thanks, Don, for being so gracious in pointing that out to me.

Sure do. And those low-resistance items become, effectively, an extension of the battery terminal, should they make contact with it. They do nothing to magically reduce skin resistance, however, so grabbing one in each (dry, un-wounded) hand and touching them to the battery terminals will give you no different effect than if you simply stuck a finger on each terminal. The key here is "skin resistance" - That doesn't vary significantly unless the skin is broken, regardless of whether you're holding a wrench, a block of wood, or your pecker, or nothing at all.

Feel free to try it. When you're done, please post to tell us how much of a non-event it ended up being. (And I'm quite sure it will be exactly that: A non-event.)