Alternator Output

There should not be anything between the alternator and the battery to prevent current flowing backward.

Follow these steps to diagnose the alternator:

Good luck!

Check to see when you turn the ignition key on that the alternator idiot light comes on. Don't know if it true of Toyota but on some makes, the altenator needs to be essentially 'primed' from the battery to kick in. There is likely a small gauge wire attached to the side of the alternator. If the key is on, that wire should be the same voltage as the battery. If not, then jump a wire from the battery positive to this connection and see if the alternator then generates power.

Thanks! I thought there might be something wrong between the alternator and the battery that caused the charging problem because I didn't get any voltage at the alternator.

It turned out I got a defective alternator. It's fixed after exchanging for another one. Hope this one will hold.Seems NAPA is going down hill. I always use it as a cheaper alternative to dealer.

IMO, for some parts, you are much better off getting OEM, including the alternator, ignition parts, brake parts, and body parts. Reman alternators are available at your Toyota dealer, and they are very reliable, about the same as the original one, which lasted 17 years for you.

likely a fusible link. there should be 12 volts at the big terminal at all times. it's possible the old alternator WAS bad and the mechanic shorted the terminal while changing the alternator..... it's also possible that the problem you have now was the reason you had trouble in the first place, too. good luck, sam

NAPA doesn't make their own parts. The parts it sells are made or remanufactured by other companies. A lot of the products they sell are good quality parts, like Wix filters. Some of it is not so good. I put a NAPA battery in my car. It lasted about 39 months. The next time I have to put a battery in, it won't be a NAPA, unless most of the warranty is still there (it had a 75 month warranty, so I ended paying a lot more than 1/2).

They also sell a lot to garages around here in Lyndhurst, NJ. I think NAPA in other places does a lot of business with garages. When my father rebuilt engines and sold auto parts, a lot of business was with garages, of course (and dealers, too).

Where I live, a lot of the gas stations have garages, still. (A lot of the garages may be operated independently of the gas stations, though). In Philly, Lansing MI and Scranton PA (the other places I've lived), most of the gas stations are now convience stores. I am not sure why this is different in NJ vs. the other places.

Jeff

All chain parts stores bring in electrical parts rebuilt by regional outside vendors, and NAPA is no exception. The trick is in the quality of the rebuilding shop they use for your area, and the level of care their people use - where they make the "toss or save" decision affects the end product greatly.

Voltage regulators, diode stacks and shaft bearings are cheap in bulk, but if they don't test them properly or ignore a slightly out of spec test and decide to 'save' the part to make another $5 profit but it's still flaky, you'll be messing with it again soon.

And if they don't put fresh brushes in every time it comes back, or they ignore a note telling them where the problem is with a "Bad Out Of Box" unit and they go "I put it on the testing machine for 10 seconds and it says it's good, box it up and send it back..." that's just plain stupid.

(Not that I've ever sat stuck in a parking lot far away from home and R&R'ed five "Bad Out Of Box" alternators in a row to finally get one that works, mind you... If Kragen/Schucks/Checker thinks that wasted afternoon of needless wrenching earned them any gratitude, they are sorely mistaken.)

NAPA should be better than most as they supply a lot of pro mechanics, and a pro never wants a callback under warranty - there goes all the profit from the job, and then some. Mechanics get burned too often, they start going to other suppliers.

True, the Genuine Toyota Remanufactured parts are as reliable as new because they don't skip any steps and use new pieces if there's any question at all, and if you want to 'replace it and forget it' that's the way to go - but BOY do you pay out the *** for the convenience.

Find out where the really good regional rebuilding shops around you are, and go there directly. Cut out the middle-man, and you can save about 70% of what the Toyota Dealers get with the same reliability.

And if there aren't any, the Dealer is a perfect fallback. Just bring your first-born child... ;-)

-->--

I think the shift to convenience stores at gas stations instead of service bays is that there is a shortage of competent technicians, so higher technician pay and/or lots of comebacks on problems have made convenience stores look more attractive economically to owners. Municipalities in metro areas are getting stricter about zoning, and depending on the local sales tax structure, municipalities may prefer to collect sales tax from stores on roads with lots of retail potential instead of not collecting sales tax on services.

Does NJ still have a law where an attendant must pump fuel into cars instead of allowing self-service? Perhaps having to pay an attendant who can also fix cars makes operating a service facility more profitable.

I had the problem with bad alternators when I moved from Chicago to the SF Bay area right after college to start work at brand T. I was driving a '74 or "75 Granada and the alternator light came on somewhere in western KS. It was late in the day so we pulled off the highway at the next intersection and found a motel. The car wouldn't start after we checked in so we walked a couple of block to a parts store the next morning, bought an alternator and a couple of wrenches, and changed the alternator in the motel parking lot. The motel manager gave us a jump, we dropped the core off and hit the road, and about the end of the next day in CO somewhere, the alternator light came on again. We pulled into a Ford dealer just before they closed, and the service manager was kind enough to give us a ride to another motel. An OEM alternator fixed the problem, and I've been soured on aftermarket alternators ever since.

I agree. I went to AutoZone first and they gave me a wrong one that won't fit, and their system don't even know which one is the right one. What I meant when I said NAPA is going down hill is that NAPA is moving down towards AutoZone to compete. There has been some changes at NAPA stores here: some are closed, many are cutting back hours. These are always sign of trouble for a big company.

It looks like they got a batch of bad re-builds. The replacement won't even fit in and I had to grind it to make it fit. I have a real bad feeling about this and don't know how they will handle a return/refund on this if this one goes bad again because they had the old core. I doubt they'd be able to find it if I need to make a return.

Yes and no. There is a fusible link between the alternator output terminal and the battery. I don't know where it is located but if you can follow the wire, you should be able to find it. Check the service manual on your car.

You are right, you should measure full battery voltage at the alternator's output terminal even though the engine isn't running. Take your multimeter and, using the ohm meter, check to see if the diodes are bad in the alternator. Set the range at Rx10 or Rx100 and check with the red lead on the alternator output terminal and the black lead on the case. If you read close to a short then try reversing the meter leads and if you still read very low resistance, you have bad diodes. That will short the battery out and melt the fusible link.

Take the alternator back to the folks you bought it from and ask for your money back. Then take the car to the dealer and pay the price for an OEM alternator and new fusible link. You've just found out why re-manufactured parts are cheaper than new OEM parts.

Jack

That and the fact that you have to pay the gas station attendents whether it is a convience store or garage.

In NJ, there is no self-service (except for diesels). So someone has to be out there pumping gas, anyway. I imagine a lot of gas stations in the old days didn't pump all that much gas, like 2000 gal/wk versus maybe

10,000gal/wk or more now. In those days, it made sense for the owner/mechanic to pump gas while the oil drips out of the pan. Now, with the more expensive techs, it is cheaper to have people man the pumps.. In states where people pump their own gas, the same person who mans the food counter takes in the gas money (and there people don't do that as much with credit cards).

Today, the oil companies want to drop off an entire tank at once (I think around 8000 gal; the one that burned in San Fransico has 8600 gal). This also drives the smaller owners out of business. I imagine most people who want to start their own garage don't want to be bothered pumping gas. And most people who are going to want to start a gas station business won't want to be bothered hiring mechanics and techs.

NJ and OR are the only states that require the station pump gas. I don't know if it is illegal for people to pump their own gas, however.

The attendent can help fix cars, but you still need a real tech. And the cost of a real tech makes it prohibitive to have the tech pump gas regularly (once in a while, while the regular attendent is filling up the toilet instead of someone's gas tank i guess would be ok). If you were a professional tech, would you want to be interupted filling up gas tanks?

Not necessarily. McDonalds and Burger King have stores closing, too.

My dad used to rebuild engines and sell auto parts. NAPA approached him at one point about his store becoming a NAPA store. Apparently, back then, for that to happen, NAPA would own 1/2 the store. I don't know if this true today or was true through the country. One auto store did sell out down the street. I don't think they did particuarly well. Eventually, the place got too hot and the fire department, about 6 blocks away, was too late, putting the store out of business. NAPA only operates a few stores in the area.

I don't know if NAPA owns any or most stores, though.

The whole auto parts store business is doing badly. Of the six or so places that rebuilt engines where my dad was, one closed completely, my father's is more or less closed (the guy who bought it is in poor health, and he mostly does heads - he doesn't sell parts much), the big local auto parts store (with about 8 branches) closed some branches and has far fewer people in the shop. Two other rebuilding places are still there. This is because cars don't have parts that need to be replaced as frequently (like caps, distrubuters and mufflers) and the engines last much longer.

NAPA closing stores here and there can be a sign of responding appropriately to the market. It is not necessarily bad. Stores like Target, Walmart, Lowes and Home Depot don't often close stores, in part, because they haven't had huge numbers of store until the last few years.