Ok, so I flew up to Hartford and picked up my car on Thursday evening. For those who missed all of this when I bought it, I have a 1995 S-6 with a whole bunch of cool mods including an RS2 conversion.
I left Hartford Friday morning with the plan of heading to Charlotte, NC to see my sister. I had to be in Alabama this evening in order to start my school tomorrow, so I had a few days to burn.
I did not even have the car on the road for an hour and I got accused of stealing it! I stopped at a Wal-Mart to pick up a fuse to fix my broken cigarette lighter, but they did not have any fuses, I just picked up a 2 dollar cig. lighter instead so I could charge my phone. I was wiring it up to the fuse block (on the driver's side of the dash) and the next thing I know I have cops surrounding me! Apparently someone saw me playing with wires and thought I was stealing the damn thing. After a few minutes of explaining things, running my license, checking the VIN number, and asking why I had a Texas temp tag in Connecticut, they finally let me go.
Then I hit NYC traffic and it took me almost 2.5 hours to get across NYC!!!! Oh yeah, and my A/C decided to cut out too, so it was a lovely, lovely trip across the city!!
I soon realized that my schedule for the day was screwed at this point, so I called Scott Lovett (motel6 on here) to see what he was up to since he lives in the D.C. area. He told me that they were having a GTG and that I should be able to get there in time, so I adjusted my plan, called me sister and dropped the hammer to get there in time. I was about 15 miles from the D.C. beltway when my battery light came on. I glanced over to the power guage and it was below 12 volts and it was getting dark so I pulled over at the next rest stop and did some troubleshootin g. It turned out that the alternator was not charging (pulled the negative terminal, car died) so I called roadside assistance for a tow. It cost me $150 to tow my car from Laurel, MD to Lovett's house in VA. The good news was that the rest stop I chose had free wi-fi so I started researching fixes on Audiworld while I was waiting for the tow truck.
So I get to Scott's house, and drove the car off of the tow truck. and while it was running, Lovett put a multimeter on the alternator to check and see what was going on. It showed zero volts.... with the battery unhooked.... but the car was still running!! After we all stood there and scratched our heads for a second we re-measured it and got a wildly varying voltages.
I went and bought a new alternator, put it in and it lasted TEN MINUTES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:
So, in the meantime, I had a bunch of Audiworld guys calling me saying that it could have just been a heat related problem from sitting in traffic.... same with the A/C. SO we yanked the new alternator back out, took them both to Autozone and had them bench tested. The new one failed and the old one passed... not once but three times! I then decided to clean the crap out of it so it could cool better, so I cracked it open and cleaned the shit out of it, then had it tested again and it passed... twice!
I then remounted me original part (it was Sunday afternoon at this point) and the car is running like a champ. I drove from Scott's house to Nashville yesterday with zero issues and then from Nashville to Huntsville this morning with zero issues.
Oh and the "new" alternator went back to the store for a full refund... what a crazy weekend!
This car is VERY quick by the way... just thought I would throw that in... I will eventually get a time slip and a dyno sheet, but it is a seriously quick car.