One of my friends has a '93 Mustang 2.3L and called me yesterday complaining of a dead battery.
So I went over there today and checked it out. Got in and the battery was completely totally dead. The battery is about 6 months old btw.
I jumped it off with my trusty Isuzu diesel, and it started right up. The voltmeter was normal and no battery light.
Now here's where it gets weird:
She said there was a "noise coming out of the right rear speaker, even when it's turned off". I figured possibly the fuel pump relay was sticking and causing the pump to stay running all the time
(cause women are always wrong about car stuff, right?).
Well nope. Sure enough, there is this weird spitting hissing noise emanating from that speaker. It goes away when you turn the radio on, but..it doesn't stop when you turn the key off and it doesn't stop when you pull the radio fuse.
What stops it is pulling the negative battery cable, then reconnecting it(engine off). It doesn't appear to come back until you start the car up and build some rpms.
I worked on this car a month ago for an unrelated issue, and i noticed this time that it's running sluggishly....kinda hesitates when you get on the gas. Wasn't doing that before, but it could be from the computer relearning.
I checked all the cables and they look good. The ONLY thing that caught my attention was via my nose: I smelled something faintly electrical in the engine compartment and sure enough, it was the alternator. It was very hot to the touch after about 5 minutes of run time. I remember way back that my brother had an alternator take a crap on him, and it turned itself into an electric motor. I would guess this to be a diode gone bad.
My friend does not have a lot of money to spend on repairs, so I would like to narrow down the possibilities as far as possible before I tear into it...
Thanks a lot guys....
So I went over there today and checked it out. Got in and the battery was completely totally dead. The battery is about 6 months old btw.
I jumped it off with my trusty Isuzu diesel, and it started right up. The voltmeter was normal and no battery light.
Now here's where it gets weird:
She said there was a "noise coming out of the right rear speaker, even when it's turned off". I figured possibly the fuel pump relay was sticking and causing the pump to stay running all the time
(cause women are always wrong about car stuff, right?).Well nope. Sure enough, there is this weird spitting hissing noise emanating from that speaker. It goes away when you turn the radio on, but..it doesn't stop when you turn the key off and it doesn't stop when you pull the radio fuse.
What stops it is pulling the negative battery cable, then reconnecting it(engine off). It doesn't appear to come back until you start the car up and build some rpms.
I worked on this car a month ago for an unrelated issue, and i noticed this time that it's running sluggishly....kinda hesitates when you get on the gas. Wasn't doing that before, but it could be from the computer relearning.
I checked all the cables and they look good. The ONLY thing that caught my attention was via my nose: I smelled something faintly electrical in the engine compartment and sure enough, it was the alternator. It was very hot to the touch after about 5 minutes of run time. I remember way back that my brother had an alternator take a crap on him, and it turned itself into an electric motor. I would guess this to be a diode gone bad.
My friend does not have a lot of money to spend on repairs, so I would like to narrow down the possibilities as far as possible before I tear into it...
Thanks a lot guys....
