Travels of the Fury

From various sources. The first, I kid you not, was written on a bathroom wall at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, back in the Seventies, and the second was from some 'Dad Joke' book I read a few decades ago.

 

Here’s a few more photos from our visit from Kevin and Deb.



Nathaniel sporting his Fury shirt


And of course a few night time shots, for fun

 

Got home yesterday morning and spent part of the day cleaning off a couple battalions of suicide butterfly's and one kamikaze crow. It was kind of interesting to see crow feathers poking out from around the left headlamp and hood opening, should have taken a couple of pics.
Today I'm tackling 3 weeks of jungle growth so hopefully I'll get to downloading pics from both camera's this evening and start posting later.

 

Glad to hear that you made it home safe and sound. I am looking forward to seeing all of the photos and hearing about your adventure!

 

The Fury has been giving me some trouble this summer. I was having a dead battery with regularly. At first I thought it was just the battery, so I replaced it. But then I began having the same issue with the new one. I suspected the Alternator, but when I tried the old “pull the negative cable off while it’s running” trick it didn’t die. So I was stumped. I finally gave in and asked some of our mechanics what they thought it could be. They said they would be happy to check it out for me. So last Friday I drove the Fury to work and they checked it out during their afternoon break.



It turns out it was the alternator. It was producing just enough to keep the car running, but not enough to charge the battery.
Mystery solved.

So, now it’s time to install a new alternator. I decided that this was the perfect project for Nathaniel and Caleb to tackle. So Yesterday after church they put on their rubber gloves and broke out the tools.



There was some Tomfoolery….



But not too much. In less than an hour they were finished. We fired it up and everything worked as it should.

Meanwhile Mrs. OrthmannJ had taken the opportunity to start “organizing” things in the garage. She gave up in the evening, before the task was completed, which meant the Fury got to spend the night outside.

And of course it rained last night.


Want it to rain? Clean your car. Oh well. It’s not made of sugar.

 

EXCELLENT!

Quite a few years back, older daughter and I handled an alternator replacement on her old Ford Probe GT.

 

It's the physics. Once excitation is achieved, it's self-sustaining until the alternator stops physically, or the diode bridge burns an open into itself.

Which brings me to this point: to diagnose a power draw, just put a 12 volt test light between the negative cable terminal and post, see if it lights up. If it does, on a non-computerized car, it's usually the alternator first, dome/courtesy circuits second. Glove box lights are lovely.

 

You're taking the battery's reservoir out of the equation. Since everything is connected and there are multiple ground paths because the engine block and alternator are one unit, you are (mostly) not damaging or causing problems by pulling it off. Ultimately you don't truly need a battery to really run the ignition a car once you've started it, so if you take the battery off of a running car if the alternator is good, it will stay running. If it's bad, it will shut off relatively quickly or start stumbling and having problems.

It's kind of a ghetto\desert road test really, if you have a good multimeter or test light it will tell you the same thing and as OrthmannJ found out isn't fool proof because it really takes a minimal amount of current to run an ignition circuit that won't necessarily be able to keep reliably charging the battery. A good multimeter measuring the battery and alternator output are the true test: it should be more than 13.5V at the battery and ideally around 14.5V when running at idle with no accessories running to show a standard "keeps the car going" healthy alternator. If it dips much below (like say 12.75-13.0V) it'll do what he found, keep everything running but the battery will eventually die if you aren't running on the interstate at high speed with next to no accessories going.

This test method also doesn't work so well with most modern cars due to their computers getting really upset if ground paths or voltage fluctuations happen.

 

It's like you said. It's a desert road test. One my Grandpa and Dad used to do. It was easy so I tried it. Obviously it didn't tell me what I needed to know
I don't have a multimeter, which is why I brought it to the shop. The fellers had it diagnosed in no time.

 

my two daughters both had to change their oil before their cars could leave the driveway after the first 3000 mi. on their first cars.

 

Well, as to our younger daughter (soon to be 34), she was interested in vehicle ACTIVITIES (went 'Jeeping' with friends, etc...), she expressed absolutely NO interest in maintaining a vehicle. I perhaps should have pushed the issue more. She destroyed the first car we gave her in about a year and a half.

At least she learned to drive a manual, and still prefers it.

 

If their cars last, they get to keep them upon graduation. They have always been responsible for maintaining, insuring and any other occurances.