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static,
Good advice from the posters already.
I had a similar experience with my '86 240 in early December. Lights grew progressively dimmer, my Sony CD/Radio began to act strangely too, car began to run rough. Parked the car, would not restart.
I checked the voltage at the battery - 9.6v ! (I now have a new voltage gauge for the car hoping this won't happen to me again.)
I went over each of the wires attached to the alternator. Cleaned the little red wire contacts - female and male. Put dialectric grease on those. Found that the alternator's black ground wire that attaches to the engine block - didn't! Got a new short piece of proper gauge wire and put on new connectors. Cut off the connector on the large red wire and replaced with a new connector, soldered it for good measure and reattached. That fixed all the alternator wires and connectors.
Went to Sprawl-Mart and got a new $39.00 battery, cleaned the battery terminal connectors (almost replaced those but they seemed good.) Put everything together and voila - she started and ran like a champ!!
While that night's experience was a terrible one - leaving me stranded after fighting with it for two hours in the drenching Boston rain - I learned a lot from it, and so with those repairs I had luckily prepared it for the nasty cold weather that followed for this past 8 weeks. She has started every morning when -5F out, and only one morning gave me a bit of concern when it was -10F.
Go over all your alternator wires and clean the contacts. Clean your battery posts and terminal connectors. Replace your battery if you have any concerns with it. It's much cheaper than a tow - and you have some peace of mind that it will not be the weakest link.
The brushes and voltage regulator might be of concern. Fairly inexpensive fix all around.
Hope that helps.
Good Luck!
TomD
'86 240
'93 240
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