The Penny Drops

[Fisher, Scott]

> >Suddenly at high RPMs the engine cut out.  I dropped the
> >revs and continued, thinking something had gotten fouled
> >or gummed in the heat/stop-and-go.
>
> What was the voltage during all of this?

Wish I'd had the presence of mind to look at that gauge -- my attention had
been on the temp gauge for the past hour (high but below the top of the
normal operating range), and when it started acting up in heavy traffic, I
was mainly trying to work my way to the right shoulder in case anything
completely locked up on me.

> >"Y'oughta get your alternator looked at," sez Tommy.  "Car
> >oughta run if you take the battery OUT once it starts."
>
> Wrong.

I suspected as much at the time, but decided that my role in life was not to
teach electrical engineering to the tow truck drivers of Fairfield,
California, especially when I wasn't 100% certain of exactly what was going
on at the time. :-)

> Look in any race car and you'll see a small gel-cell.  In the pits
> somewhere is a normal-sized battery with a quick-disconnect plug.
>
> Your battery was fried, possibly due to a malfunctioning voltage
> regulator,

Had that happen 17 years ago.

> but also possibly due to a battery failure.

The battery that died was in the car when I bought it 4 years ago, don't
know how old it was then.  Oddly enough, on this trip I stayed with the
friends that I bought the car from... that was sweet, as they had used my
old Coupe for their honeymoon, so they started waxing nostalgic as I showed
up.  I'd bet Daren put a new battery in it for that trip; they've been
married 6 or 7 years now, so I suspect the battery was just at the end of
its normal life, accelerated by the heat.  And since this was the third
successive trip in 100-degree-plus heat in six weeks, it's probably safe to
assume this was just the natural EOL for this battery.  Still:

> Keep a close eye on everything...

Oh yeah.  Especially since some of the stretches of I-5 that I travel are
pretty desolate.  Never more than 20-30 miles between towns, but not a
distance I'd want to hike if the car shut down on me, say, halfway between
Yreka and Ashland...

Thanks,

--Scott Fisher
  Tualatin, Oregon