|
a few months ago, i bought myself my first car of my very own-- a vanilla-colored 1980 volvo 244 dl. (i figured, now that i'm out of college and working a lot, i should be able to get around easier.) it's beautiful, and i've been doing what i can to take car of it, replacing stuff, changing oil. my past experience with cars is pretty limited, but i want to learn, and my little volvo seems like a great place to start-- so far, everything seems to make sense and, with the right manual, is relatively easy to deal with.
here's the problem: two weeks ago, i came out of work, and the battery was dead. this seemed bad, as i had replaced the battery just after i bought the car. i jump-started it, and got home. when my friendly neighbor was jumping it for me very kindly the next day, he asked if he could take a look at it. when i said "sure," he proceeded, after the engine had been started and was running, to pull the positive and negative poles from the battery. when the engine kept running with the battery disconnected, he said, "well, that means the alternator's fine. it's probably just these battery cables. i'd say, replace them." they did look a little old, so i did. the car starts, i'm good, right?
well, a few days after all of this, a little light with which i wasn't familiar started coming on, the "amp" light. i pulled out the owner's manual to find out what that meant, and it told me that it was the alternator light. what's more, it told me to never, never disconnect the battery while the engine was running, or my alternator would be "immediately destroyed."
ouch. it hurt to read that. is my alternator really completely destroyed? or do diodes just need replacing? does anybody know exactly what damage can be done to an alternator when you unplug the battery, or maybe what "immediately destroyed" means? i don't really want to shell out the price of a whole new alternator, and i'm willing to work hard and learn a lot.
thanks.
jeff
|
