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Hi all,
I became stranded at a service station with a completely dead battery - got a jumpstart but afterwards the car had issues driving, and would give a feeling of being flooded before coming to a complete stop.
My guess is that the alternator is toast and that the jumpstart provided enough electricity to run the ECU momentarily before it couldn't any longer, resulting in the ECU being unable to manage the fuel injection, hence the stall. Is this a fair assessment? After the jumpstart the battery light remains on, which to me indicates the alternator is not putting voltage back into the system - but I can't verify till later with a multimetre. Curiously even with the jumper leads to a second car remaining connected, the battery light remained on... Which I would not have expected.
While looking under the hood, I noticed a single blue wire into the alternator had come unplugged, I presume this is the alternator regulator wire? I put it back in, but further jumpstarts resulted in the same behaviour. Would this wire being unplugged have damaged the alternator? Is there a way to test whether the regulator just needs replacement (cheap) or whether the entire alternator needs to be done (expensive)?
Thanks!
-p
I became stranded at a service station with a completely dead battery - got a jumpstart but afterwards the car had issues driving, and would give a feeling of being flooded before coming to a complete stop.
My guess is that the alternator is toast and that the jumpstart provided enough electricity to run the ECU momentarily before it couldn't any longer, resulting in the ECU being unable to manage the fuel injection, hence the stall. Is this a fair assessment? After the jumpstart the battery light remains on, which to me indicates the alternator is not putting voltage back into the system - but I can't verify till later with a multimetre. Curiously even with the jumper leads to a second car remaining connected, the battery light remained on... Which I would not have expected.
While looking under the hood, I noticed a single blue wire into the alternator had come unplugged, I presume this is the alternator regulator wire? I put it back in, but further jumpstarts resulted in the same behaviour. Would this wire being unplugged have damaged the alternator? Is there a way to test whether the regulator just needs replacement (cheap) or whether the entire alternator needs to be done (expensive)?
Thanks!
-p
