Greetings All,
So over the last week I noticed the ole 52 mm voltmeter dropping to 12 v (top of red zone) at random times, ie, not at startup so probably not the exciter circuit I thought. Pondered for a few days then one day it dropped and stayed right in the driveway so left the car running and grabbed the voltmeter from the garage and measured the voltage right at the alternator - 12 v. So this pointed me to regulator or brushes but then I pulled the log book out and found this entry: "new rebuilt Autozone alternator March 1 2007". Pulled up their listing and it says "limited lifetime warranty" - could it be I thought. So I pulled the pulley and capacitor because it said they don't come with those and drove over there. Sure enough 7 years and 100,000 miles later they gave me another one new rebuilt one in the box. Pretty good, ehh? I don't know what was going on then and why I didn't do brushes or whatever back then. You can have the cheap parts discussion but for easy things like alternators if they'll keep giving you replacements, why not?
Robb McC