Alternator?

Maarten

Thank you so much for your reply. Even with my lack of technical know-how I actually feel like I could go and check this out for myself now.

I notice a bit of dutch round your posting. I'm in Budel, just south of Eindhoven. You're right about the cold and I don't think all the moisture in the air is helping either!

Groetjes

Tim

You may also check that the battery , alternator, and all ground straps and wires are clean and tight. Sometimes a connection gets corroded and/or shakes loose.

Jack

The devil of the brushes, if I'm not mistaken, is that the warning light is lit by current going into the regulator to excite the rotor - when the alternator is charging okay, the alternator bucks the battery on the other side of the light and extinguishes the light by supplying the rotor current itself. When the brushes go out, the alternator can't put out current but the light doesn't go on because there isn't any current through it, either. More modern systems may do it differently.

Mike

Wow! Thank you all, especially Pat with your Dummies Guide to Diagnosing Battery/Alternator problems. It seems it's now time for me to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty.

To put my uneasiness into context, the first time I ever lifted the bonnet and touched anything under there I played the idiot, took the radiator cap off whilst it was hot and spent the night in hospital with first degree burns! So I tend to avoid venturing under there if I can possibly help it!

I'm currently living in the Netherlands and am missing being able to communicate with friendly local mechanics or friends with know-how. I'm suspicious that cold damp air, which there is plenty of here, isn't doing my wagon any good. It's got 140,000 miles on the clock (so is good for the same again!) and I think we're just going through a stage of having to replace original parts that have served their time.

I'll check back to let you all know how I get on. If anyone knows of a Volvo Owners club in the Eindhoven/Noord-Brabant area, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks - Tim

Wow, radiator burns sound pretty painful.

A warning instruction omitted earlier: be sure to disconnect your battery before doing any work around the alternator.

Hah! I can be as stupid as the next guy... maybe stupider! Last month I removed the cap from my daughter's Honda without thinking. The coolant spewed out and soaked the sleeve of the shirt I was wearing, along with the sleeve of the sweatshirt over it. I shook my arm to get the scalding sweatshirt down past my hand, but I couldn't do anything about my shirt sleeve. It was about 10 seconds before I got cold water on it.

Most of the burn was a bright red first degree, but there were some small blisters. After a week or so the skin turned crinkly and peeled off.

I routinely pick tea bags and ears of corn out of boiling water with my fingers (my wife no longer gets on me about it), but this was in a different league. Since the stuff is made to boil at elevated temperatures, when it comes out boiling it means business.

Ah, it's great to be a guy!

Mike

My worst (so many to choose from): With my ordinary home depot black&decker electric drill, it took about 45 minutes to drill out the broken and rusted mounting stud from the exhaust manifold flange on my old 1800E. Holding the downpipe with my right hand, drilling with full body weight on left hand, the worn out and red-hot bit finally punched through to the other side, accelarating to top RPM, where the tip of my index finger was waiting to be pinched between the bit and the pipe. $5,000 medical bills to glue my fingertip and fingernail back together. After bandages and splints removed 3 months later, discovered that the bone was also broken at the knuckle and healed a little crooked. Still can't bend that fingertip like I used to.

Ah, to be a stupid man and admit it.

OW!!!!!!!! You win.

Mike

Heheh. After I stopped driving my 240, I was taking parts off of it, partly to use them, partly out of curiosity. I figured I could rig up my own valve spring compressor with a couple odd shaped pieces of metal and a long screwdriver to pry. This took all of my body weight leaning down on my makeshift prybar, when suddenly I slipped and one of those odd shaped pieces of metal shot up and hit my two front teeth right at the gumline. My whole head was instantly numb (compared to when I came up with this scheme, ha ha) and I thought for sure I just knocked out those two teeth and or badly split my upper lip.

After about a minute, and lucky for me, I found a mirror to look in and somehow all that happened was a couple small cuts on my gum. My teeth weren't even crack and my head soon felt normal again. Imagine what would have happened if that had hit me in an eye instead. Did I mention lucky for me?

Michael Pardee wrote:

One of us should copyright this thread before Dave Barry or someone cuts and pastes it to his publisher.

Truth is funnier than fiction.

Well guys, the prophets of doom were right. Even I can read a volt meter and make a diagnosis on the back of its results.

I checked the battery with engine off and it read a happy 12 volts. Engine on and the reading hit a lowly 7.6 volts. According to everything I've read on the matter, that just should not be the reading if the alternator is healthy. Wanting to be absolutely sure, I gave my wife the signal to turn on headlights, heater, radio, etc and rev the engine so that I could take another reading and expect a result around the 14 volt mark. At the first move, turning on the headlights brought the engine to an immediate stop. Oh dear!

So before you ask, no, we didn't get to testing the regulator, or the charge across different sections of wire/battery/alternator. The car is now stuck back out in the drive (we had to take it out of the garage to avoid poisoning ourselves when testing with the engine on!) as it won't start.

Looks like I'm going to have to get the alternator, or at least the regulator out of there and see about having it fixed. The helpful suggestions about taking the bits down to a friendly local electrical store were great, but being stuck here in the Netherlands raises a bit of a communication problem. At the moment, best bet looks like asking a friend to collect an alternator for me whilst they're in England in 10 days time. On that point, is buying a 2nd hand alternator from a trusted Volvo breaker a bad idea or worth a shot for the significant cost saving?

Tim

Recently replaced my '91 240 alternator. The old one was labeled "Bosch Remanufactured". I purchased this car in 2000 (I think) - it had 104,000 miles, and I've added 55,000. So, I guess the remanufactured unit was good for around 6 years and the original was replaced around 7 years.

Remanufactured is around $150 - $180 U.S., new is maybe $250 ? I don't know. My "new" alternator is $15 from a pull your own junk yard with new brushes. It may die today, or in 6 years.

In article , wrote: [ ... ]

If you don't have a battery charger, get one; charge the battery overnight, then you should have no problem starting and pulling the car into the garage. Alternatively, you can charge it from another car using jumper cables.

I drove my 145 for about a week with a dead alternator; I just charged the battery every night and didn't use any electrical accessories. Fortunantly, it was during the summer, so I didn't need headlights driving the 4 miles each way to work.

Gary