DarkFury

Well... I just had to put the Nas-T Bird in the shop. Something was wrong with the charging system and my battery was continuously being drained...

So I took it first to Sears, thinkin' that it was a problem with the battery. Of course they did their tests and said that it wasn't their "Diehard Gold's" fault... so they pointed the finger at the alternator.

Now that the Bird is no longer under warranty, I don't really deal with the stealership anymore for repairs so I took it to a local "electric garage".

More or less, Sears said that my alternator was putting out "Negative voltage" or something like that...but when they checked it, they said that the alternator was fine... but just underpowered to handle the power needs of my car (with all my electronics in it).

About 2 years ago... I had a brand spankin' new alternator put into my Bird... however at that time, I was told that there were no "beefier" alternators available above the stock 130 amp... so thats what they replaced it with (at a cost of around $220). I guess in 2 years time, they have developed some better diodes and whatnot, because I found that there were some 200 amp alternators listed on the internet that would fit my car now.

Well I asked the electric garage about those... and at first, they were like "well we don't really know if there is any applications of those that will work on your car" (BTW... my car has a Ford 3rd generation alternator on it). So I pointed them in the direction of those websites that claimed that they did in fact have 200 amp alternators available.

Pretty much, they had the Bird for a week... after doing some more research, they decided to put in the upgraded diodes and an upgraded regulator to boost my alternator output to 200 watts...

Now they hit me with the "sticker shock"... initially, they said that since I had bought the previous alternator from them, they would "work with me" on the new replacement... I guess "work with me" meant that they would give me half of the original labor charge back (which was $120 at the time). Pretty much 200 amp alternators cost about $289 - $600 depending on where you get them from, so they deducted the $60 from the $289 to make it $229... however they tacked back on $170 in new labor charges plus their shop fees and tax to come to the nice round figure of $420.

Honestly, I hadn't planned on spending that much for this... but I guess you just gotta do what you gotta to keep her running. And it it still is cheaper than a "car payment" in the long run.

On thing though... she sure has plenty of electrical power now. I can play the stereo full blast with the A/C, head lamps and driving lights on and I don't have any of the "dimming" of my headlights or dashboard.

Yeah... it cost me a grip to do this, but honestly, I'm loving the result of it. Now, I can really pump up the jams... with the car running.

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DarkFury's Pimptopia - Don't Hate the Playa, Hate the Game!
Home of the Original OG Pimp (accept NO imitations)

bachviet

That's a lot of $$$ but it's well spent.

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