M1RAG3

For those that have replaced their alternators...what were the signs that yours was on its way out?
-did you have excessive noise coming from your alternator?
-were you getting random warning lights flashing on your instrument panel? (I have ABS and TCS Off on permanently with AIR BAG and FASTEN SEAT BELT flashing)
-my battery is DEAD...I suspect it is not being charged at all...thus I suspect my alternator as the culprit

any help you guys can provide is much appreciated

AceofSpds

iTrader: (4)

yes that definatly sounds like an alternator, the noise its making is one of them, and the reason for your idiot lights coming on is that the car is so low on power that its draining power from those accessories to keep the motor going.

CoolMax

iTrader: (7)

awesome
http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?p=5020338
http://forums.maxima.org/showpost.php?p=5950598

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

wow...looks like you are the first person to ever have those symptoms and need a new alternator on a maxima.

all the symptoms you posted are tell tell signs of a bad alternator...but you needed a new thread to confirm

TurtleHead

Another pointless post. Just answer the posters questions without flaming. No one wants to hear you whining about it.

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

the question has been answered!
his freaking owners manual would also answer it.

my post wasnt pointless...it reminded him that every question doesnt need a new thread. plus i said "all the symptoms you posted are tell tell signs of a bad alternator"

now your post...more whining about how mean i am....

Stardust

iTrader: (10)

Oh look another pointless post from a pointless person that hasn't EVER helped the org community.

Stardust

iTrader: (10)

Shut up you bully.

TurtleHead

Some people don't have the knowledge to know what is going on with their car, that is why they ask in here. What's the point of a forum if you can't ask questions and get a respectful answer instead of same lame b.s. responses from the members that been here awhile?

Stardust

iTrader: (10)

THEN SEARCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


If you're LAZY and don't SEARCH then you get "lame b.s." replies.

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

this forum is to help solve problems...LIKE I SAID, that doesnt always require a new thread. 99% of the problems people have, have already been answered on here. do we need a new thread each time someone has a COMMON problem?
the point of the forum isnt to spoodfeed despite what people like you think. you guys might spoonfeed on your other forum...we dont here.

your complaints are common for new people...we have heard it before. within months, those people realize and agree with what we are saying. you are taking longer than normal.

TurtleHead

Who want's to pay $20 just to have a normal search function? The yahoo/google search method brings up posts in all gen's.

The time it takes to use that search method would take longer then posting a thread and getting a decent response.

Who gives a crap if the question has been asked a thousand times before, just answer the question without some smart A response and move on.

Feels like I'm in some childrens forum with some of you.

Mods need to take control of you guys. Most of you needed to be a long time ago for violating forum policies.

I bet 50%+ of your posts are to flame people, which shows your lack of maturity.

Enjoy, and I'm sure you will have some rebuttle, but it wll just come out as ...

Love_00_Max

This is the same BS that was given by these 2 guys (NmexMAX, soonerfan) too on the other thread I openend.

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=538268

No question is a stupid question, no matter how many times it is asked. I personally request these 2 guys to shut up and stop contributing to the threads if they think it is a useless thread. We don't mind the thread getting bumped down with no answers, we will be forced to find it ourselves.

To come and inflame with lousy answers does not show well on experts like the 2 above. This is my suggestion, it plain does not look good, when I get a response that helps me I feel so good, but if I get a negative response it just isn't right.

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

you donate to help keep the forum running...the ability to search is just a benefit that you get.
yeah, the mods need to "control" us. i havent violated any of the rules...i just remind people of the rules and people like you get their feelings hurt.
like i said, you arent the first person to have their feelings hurt...and you wont be the last

justinny

use a voltmeter at battery pos and neg
at idle warmed up and nothing on you should be above 14 volts dc
with everything on (radio ac etc) you should not drop below 13
if its below 13 its on its way
if its below 12.6 its gone
if you rev it it should maintain above 13.5 but not over 15
take to an auto electrical shop (yellow pages) and have them test it for you in or out of the car

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

we answered the question...remove the freaking wheel. you made it harder than it needed to be

TurtleHead

There's the response I was expecting

Why doesn't the forum just advertise like most, so members don't have to pay? Who would want to pay anything to this .org to get a flame response anyways?

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

test for alternator

start car
disconnect battery
car dies - alternator is bad

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

please go moderate your forum

justinny

WORST ADVICE EVER^^^^^
reconnect battery
blow out ecm
or fry a perfectly good alternator and/or battery

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

well if it doesnt die...you turn the car off with the key...then reconnect battery

do i have to do this for the person

CoolMax

iTrader: (7)

I predict a lovely time in Moore, OK sometime around Aug '08.

CoolMax

iTrader: (7)

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

i see what you did there

good catch

justinny

you obviously do not understand the principal that the alternators only job is to charge the battery

the battery supplies power to the vehicle

when the battery is taken out of the picture (after dying or being removed)

the brushes in the alternator start to arc from the added load and burn up (in a matter on minutes)

when it dies it could be the brush tension springs had ground themselves into the alternator's slipring, creating too much resistance (burnt up) after there was no more carbon left

so you tell me good idea or not??

that is why if the alternator dies the battery dies (obviously)
if the battery dies you can kill a perfectly healthy alternator in a very short amount of time

this info is universal for alternators

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

i didnt say drive around town.
disconnect the battery. if the alternator is ALREADY BAD (which his is) the car will die anyway.
if for some reason it keeps running...turn the car off. the alternator will be fine

justinny

actually this would be a test for a car with a generator since the battery is only for starting in a 1956 tbird

justinny

if you know its already bad then why are you testing it?????
think about it

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

if its bad...why is he starting a thread?
it will PROVE to him that its bad...since he doesnt believe us.

i try to answer and people wanna argue

justinny

but if its good that test can kill it in minutes at idle
THIS IS MY POINT
hes asking cause he wants to make sure its bad
it could be a wire on it in the harness or just a bad battery

i argue cause your info is bad sir

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

if the battery is bad...my test will show that because the car wont die

justinny

ok last night u asked for my credentials
im an a-tech and and electrical expert in automotive and fully electrical drive systems for over 10 years

u?

SoonerFan

iTrader: (5)

ive tested alternators this way about 20 times on diffirent cars

like i said, the car will only be running for seconds with the battery disconnected. it only takes that long to see if the alternator is bad

justinny

ive test hundreds if not thousands of alternators and batteries
this is not a good idea
maybe you should learn from some1 who is more experienced than yourself and stop flaming threads
also
do yourself a favor and stop this kind of stuff before you destroy some1s car

dko

iTrader: (7)

There is a really good reason that it costs $20 to have access to search. This site is run by volunteers. It relies on advertising, sponsors and donations. The people who pay for the hosting have often done so out of their own pocket when there was insufficient revenue -- which was quite often in the first years of the forum. If you use this forum primarily to diagnose issues with your car and find advice on maintenance and repair, it is well worth the $20 just for search. I can't even say how much money I have saved thanks to the .org and I think it's very well worth it to get premium access to a site with such a large knowledge base for only a bit more than you would pay for a chilton or haynes manual. Not to mention that donating also grants you other privileges; a custom avatar and title as well as access to the OT area. these are features that make it more of a community and are there to reward people who spend enough time here to feel like donating to the site is worthwhile.

the reason this site costs so much to the people that run it and the reason that search was disabled to start with is because this is a large community with many members and many, many threads. the more threads you have the more CPU time it takes to search. search was disabled for non-donating members because when this forum reached a certain size, many people realized it was a great resource and used it just as a knowledge base and contributed nothing. with a large number of search queries being run the site ground to a halt and was unusably slow. in fact, it went down on an almost daily basis.

the decision was made by the moderators to disable the search feature and later re-enable it for donating members. when you create a useless thread about something that has been covered many, many times before and is in fact in the stickies and/or other FAQ's, you are eating up server space and bandwidth and creating further and further redundancy. you are not adding anything to the community, you are detracting from it. every single redundant post will infuriate users that have been here a while. that's because you came to play in our sandbox, you have ignored the publicly posted rules and requests of the owners and moderators, and then you have the audacity to be flabbergasted when you are jokingly reprimanded for it. there is a very simple course of action if you do not like it here or find the attitude of a member not befitting your standards of conduct -- leave.

aside from moderators, no one, regardless of how long they have been here has official seniority. HOWEVER, the users that have been here longer are a part of a community. the spend their time here and they contribute to that very community. not only do the donate to the forum, they also spend a lot of time answering questions and helping people if they have an issue that has not been covered before. this gives them SENIORITY, even if it is only perceived, whether you like it or not. they have done something for this community. you, however, are a leach until proven otherwise. every single moderator on this site as well as anyone who has been part of this community for any significant length of time will agree with soonerfan and Stardust. if you don't like the prevailing attitudes of this place, i again remind you that you have a wonderful method of recourse -- leave.



this forum does advertise, it does not do so in every single post, only in the individual forum sections. i personally am really glad this is the case and would gladly donate another $20 to keep it this way, if necessary. also, as I stated above, this site has direct sponsorship from several companies. companies that have made quite a bit from maxima owners and realize that if it were not for this forum they wouldn't have nearly the same amount of business. Cattman, BlehmCo, CustomMaxima (when it was around), Warpspeed (for a short time) and Budget/Lyell Stainless have all at one time or another been sponsors, some bought ad space and some simply felt that it was worthwhile to reward the people that run this forum for bringing them more business.

justinny

i could only imagine what the bandwidth bill could be with half the google searches for maxima problems directs traffic here

if every newbs question generates 3 pages of flames what sucks up more bandwidth?
(not that you wouldn't normally get 3 pages of flames anyway)
they gotta test it for a few month and see if it decreases or increases traffic and/or bandwidth usage

dko

iTrader: (7)

once the pages are indexed by google they never access them again until the next time they get indexed. do you seriously think the engine combs through the entire forum in .3 seconds? usually threads like this get locked sooner, so there are few threads that have 3 pages of flames. it was tested for a few months to see what is more intensive. that is why the search is still disabled. searching using the forum search taxes the system far more because it resides on just a few servers (maybe even just one), whereas the google indexes are load balanced and obviously far more numerous, more powerful and much more well funded. and it's not as much the bandwidth used that make searches a problem, it's the fact that the server is heavily taxed by 50 people searching at once, so much so that it slows down the site for people that are just reading threads and eventually if the load keeps up the whole site goes down. like a DOS attack, pretty much.

once someone finds something in a google search and clicks over here, serving the page takes a miniscule amount of system resources. searching the entire database of 400,000 threads and 5,000,000 posts takes a lot longer and uses many, many more cycles. the bandwidth is not so much the issue any more since it has gotten much cheaper. the issue is now site stability and maintaining a certain quality of service. compared to the old days, this site is infinitely more stable and much faster. part of that is due to a change in ownership, part of that is due to a change of equipment and collocation services and part of that is the continued enforcement of site policies, e.g. public search turned off, strict sig controls, more moderators, e.g.

justinny

server upgrade?? throw more memory at it
alot of links from google are broken/misdirected most ppl wont go so far as to find the "oldthread" trick
the link to donate is broken
as far as the google search - if you didnt donate, you dont have a search pull down menu at all on the top to get to the link (can some1 post it here pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)
so were kinda fcked wouldnt u say?

dko

iTrader: (7)

here's the thread the tells you how. and look, it's a sticky! and it's even in this very same forum section!

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=274722


the donation link works fine. i just tried it, click 'donations' in the website banner all the way at the top.

this site is not here to reward laziness and stupidity. there is no reason that the owners should pay more for a faster server just to serve people that do not add anything to the community. a server upgrade and public search would in no way benefit the people that actually spend time here trying to help people, find out more about mods, develop new ones and generally keep abreast of maxima stuff.

if you have a question about anything, anything at all, there is a 90% chance that it is covered in the how-to's, the FAQ's or in other stickies. please look there first. if it's not there, do a google search and if you still have no answers then post. this is a good practice not only because it cuts down on redundant posts, but also because it teaches you to solve your own problems before demanding help from someone else.

TurtleHead

Nothing but love!