Lalo

i went up to napa to see my girlfriend and her '99 mustang was having some problems. The car wouldnt start. At first I thought it was the battery, so we bought a new one, and it started to work fine once i installed it. but then the stang started to have the same problems, so it had to be the alternator. so we bought the alternator and since ive installed it its been working fine.
at first i wouldnt think a five year old alternator would fail, but i guess it did. has anyone else had same problem?
i'm also thinking it may be that the ends on the cables that hook up to the battery may be really eroded and may have something to do with the flow of the power but i doubt it because it works fine now.
my girlfriend is the second owner of the stang, and she bought the stang about 2 years ago with VERY low mileage. The past owners would use it as a weekend car and would store it, but i wonder where? those napa people like to store things

DanS.02GT

It's not too unusual for an alternator to fail, but you should probably have tested it before replacing. If the cables or terminals are badly corroded, it could be causing the problems. They should be cleaned up if possible, or replaced if not.

Lalo

yea, i know now that i should have tested it before. :bang: :bang: :bang:
i used a metal brush thing made to clean the ends of the cables and put some baking soda with water and it ate up all that junk.
I barely did the work on it 3 days ago, so we'll see how it goes

Galaxie

I find that Ford alternators fail quite often... I see many Fords driving down the street with dim headlights (a good sign of poor voltage)

my father's '89 Areostar is on its 4th one. (I rebuilt this one myself)

Lalo

oh man, bad news :notnice:
do you know why they go through alternators quickly???

Lalo

is there any other problems the '99 mustang might go trough. just wanna be ready once they hit, or maybe be able to stop it before it starts

Galaxie

this is 1/2 opinion, 1/2 experience...

it could be that the rebuilt ones that pops was getting from the mechanic were really sloppy rebuild jobs. I will see how long the one I rebuilt myself lasts.

DanS.02GT

Now that the termainals are clean, you should put something on them to seal it. There's a product called NOCO That you can spray on them to prevent corrosion. Or you could just coat them with vaseline.

Lalo

thanks a lot dan. will do