GET YOURSELF A MINI-STARTER!
TRUST ME, EVEN IF YOUR CURRENT PROBLEM IS NOT THE STARTER, YOU WILL THANK ME!

another vote for the mini-starter...

Like I said never had a failure because of using that method.

consider yourself lucky then.

its like eating lead paint chips, sure some wont kill you, but do it enough times, and sooner or later things wont be so good.

there are some switching transistors inside the ecu but there aren't much else. Youre talking about new technology. we are talking old.

the voltage regualtor also is most likely old technology. and they are stout enough to handle a jump.

what kind of spike are you talking about? I dont see a great large spike occurring (nor can I think of where one would come from). The battery is not going to peak in voltage when you disconnect it.

Im an electrical engineer from missouri. show me how.

well Im no engineer, but

its all about a circuit collapsing.

Why do some Ford truck starter solenoids need to be diode supressed?

Why do computers switch the ground and not the positive?

What makes points erode away?? its only low voltage passing though them isnt it. Why do they spark??

Why do A/C clutches have clamping diodes on them?? To prevent the spike.

What spike?? ??

Go put a voltmeter on your battery charger, without hooking it up to a battery, just connect the leads, then, turn it on to "boost" check the voltage now. Where does it go when you hook up the battery again??

theres your spike.

and tell me, what separates new technology from old technology?? a transistor is a transistor, lots are protected, but how many arent? and do you think the protected ones would be in the new stuff or the old stuff??

again, no disrespect implied, but nobody better be disconnecting a battery with the car running. I dont care how old it is.

How big a spike are you talking about. The most it can be is 18v. Max out put of charing system and that isn't enough to cause the damage you are paniced over. I've been at this for 45 years so I do have a little experience. You can't compare a battery charger to your cars charging system as they are completely differnt.

What makes you think 18v is the max?

heres an old school example. Charge up a condenser with a 12v source, then toss it to your buddy. he gets shocked bad when he catches it.

Why? only 12v went into it.

Only 12v passes through your ignition coil, yet it produces as much as 40kv. How? its 2 rolls of wire, thats all. a simple transformer. It sparks when the primary circuit collapses.

is an electrical system not a roll of wire?

let me put it this way. A battery charger works like an ignition coil. It uses electromagnetic induction.

Now, an alternator works how?

Electromagnetic induction. The field inside the rotor becomes a magnet when its energized. The poles of the rotor spinning generate an AC signal into the stator. Since we cant use an AC signal in a car, we use a rectifier to cancel out the part of the sine wave we dont require. We just take the top part of the sine wave, then in an automobile alternator, we take off at 3 points so a minimum of six diodes are required in a 3 phase alternator. (some imports and new stuff have as many as 6 phases)

anyway, with the battery disconnected, the AC signal has no where to go.

I wonder what the threshold voltage of the rectifier diodes are??? I can tell you its been exceeded.

Guess what, if your spike didnt kill anything, you may very well have just killed one third of the rectifier in the alternator. It will still charge, but only capable of one two thirds its original output.

You may have killed it and didnt even know it!

and that goes for old or new! anything with an alternator.

does that make sense?

18v is the max output of an unregulated Mopar alternator. Try it yourself and get back to us. Like I said 45 years practical expreience says your talking though your hat professor.

45 years of doing damage and you didnt even know it!

you just dont get it.

18v full fielded, big deal! Thats still a DC circuit. Disconnect the battery now its no longer a DC circuit.

This is a case of a little knowledge is dangerous! Glad you dont work on my vehicles, and hope you dont work on others.

I could dig out my college stuff but it seems youre not interested in the facts, just 45 years of doing it the wrong way. Ive been doing this professionaly for 18 years and spent 4 of them working in an automotive electrical specialty shop. Ive spent many hours fixing problems caused from guys like you. Thanks for the $$$$



No need to call me professor. Just trying to explain how it works. I'm sorry I cant help your closed mindedness.

Have a great day!

Quote:

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START YOUR CAR AGAIN (IF YOU CAN) AND WHILE IT IS RUNNING, PULL OFF THE POSITIVE BATTERY CABLE.. SEE IF IT STAYS RUNNING.. IF IT DIES RIGHT AWAY, SOMETHING IS WRONG IN YOUR CHARGING CIRCUIT.. BAD ALTENATOR, REGULATOR, SHORTED WIRE, BAD GROUND, ECT.. THAT IS DRAINING YOUR BATTERY..

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not to any more but when my pos. cable came off on my bike it cooked every light bulb on it (about 17) the fuel pump and the horn. so i cost my self over 150 in parts cuz i didnt get the bolt out for the cable . after that ill never take the pos. cable off

Take the battery to Checker, Kragen, Autozone, whatever. Have it tested on the charger, not the hand-held tester. If it takes a full charge and shows as good, remove alternator and take to the same and have them do a bench (charging) test on it, not in the car!.... If it fails, you know what to do...If it passes, check your ground first. Then, check all cables for corrosion. If all is good, replace or check ballast resistor, then the voltage regulator. If you're still having problems, check your wiring. (Ebay sells wiring diagrams for cheap)

Hope this helps...Been there.

Take the starter as long as you're taking the other stuff.

Any thing you say. You have to be right after all you say you are. I'll continue to do it my way until I have my first failure and then I might consider changing. But so far it hasn't happened.

Place a volt meter across your Alt, disconnect the battery and see for yourself what the voltage jumps to. Often times it will exceed 400 volts. In automotive electrical school (MOPAR) This was the first thing taught to us dealer weanies. DO NOT UNHOOK A BATTERY WHILE THE ENGINE IS RUNNING! I'm glad to hear you have never had a problem. A better way to see if the Alt is working would be to place a screw driver against the rear center, if it sticks the unit is at least somewhat working.

Im still having a hard time seeing it.

an ignition coil works because there is a winding around a metal core which induces a higher voltage on a secondary winding. the spark is created in the secondary coil when the field is broken. a high voltage is also created in the primary windings but that drains off through the condensor. read this article here.

http://abbysenior.com/mechanics/ignition.htm

a straight piece of wire will not produce a high voltage by connecting and disconnecting a power source to it. you need a transformer to do that and then it depends on the primary to secondary coil winding relationship. It will create a magnetic field around it.

are you saying the magnetic fiels from all the wires are inducing higher volatges on all the other wires? then it seems none of our cars should work and that when we shut them off we will have the situation you have described- i.e., collapsng a field and creating a damaging high voltage spike.

im going to try the disconnecting the battery trick because I dont see the mechanics of why it would happen. 400v seems highly unlikely.

Heres, my theory- the battery is used to start the car. the alternator charges the battery. when the car is running, the alternator is outputing 14v which goes straight to the battery through the ammeter. so with the car running, you have the 12v from the battery and the the 14v from the alternator connected together. the 14v from the alt being higher than the 12v in the battery, charges the battery. remove the battery and the alternator HAS NO IDEA THAT IT IS MISSING. It still is suppling 14v to the rest of the circuit which in turn keeps everything at the same potential. so why would it jump up in voltage???? The alternator puts out higher or lower current depending on the needs of the system.

other cars may have some funky circuit that powers the voltage regulator off the battery alone and which shuts down the alternator when the battery is disconnected (thereby shutting down the car cause there is NO voltage source for the ignition after the alt turns off and the battery is disconnected ) but the 60's and 70' mopars arent one of them.

and all transistors ARE NOT the same. some are high power, some are low power. high power transistors in the ignition system take a lot of brunt force. low power transistors in a microprocessor take very little to damage them (hence the expensive voltage regulation circuits in computers)

but like I said, I'm gonna try it and see what the voltage goes to. unfortunatly, I need to wait until i replace my battery cause it died a while ago and I havent replaced it yet.