More Woes (Alternator)

Just when I got the car back from the last repair, another issue popped up.

(sigh)

It’s getting a little frustrating. Yeah, I know that the Banana is 20 years old but I maintain the hell out of it and it still keeps letting me down. Much like those bad relationships from high school: let’s hope that once we get past this problem things will get better. (grin)

My first thought was that, since the car was recently serviced, maybe one of the battery connections was bad. Nope, both batteries were connected tightly.

I attached my CTek charger to see if that would help and it kept generating an error (red light). I pulled the accessory battery to rule out some issue in the rest of the system, hooked it up again, and it threw another red light, so I took it to the local Advance Auto to be tested.

It was a Mercedes battery (A 001 982 80 08) but it died in less than three years (sigh).

I bought a non-Mercedes AGM replacement to see if that would help. Nope.

With two known good batteries I started the car and tested the voltage across the starter battery. It was about 12V versus the expected 14V, and I could hear something was wrong from the sounds coming from the alternator.

I looked up how to replace the alternator on an M113 engine and it looked a little above my pay grade. You can do it from the top (I don’t own a lift) but you have to remove some coolant hoses and that is one of the jobs I don’t like to do.

So it was time to send it back to the shop.

Mercedes cars will display two main types of warning. The yellow (amber) warnings indicate that something is wrong but that the car should still be safe to drive. The red warnings mean stop the car now. I did some research and from what I read the braking system requires a certain amount of electricity. If you lose it you can’t stop the car easily. Since my shop is 78 miles from my house, it was time for a tow.

I insure the car with Hagerty and my policy includes up to 100 miles of towing. Now in the promotion material you always see a flat-bed, which I would have preferred, but I got a standard tow truck.

The driver, Red, is a neighbor and he promised to take good care of the car, but since my day was going so well (my dog died, too) of course the tow truck had to break down. I have Airtags in all my vehicles so I was able to text Red when it didn’t move for awhile.

Eventually the car arrived at the shop and they will start working on it soon. I need it to pass inspection by the end of the month since, in North Carolina, you have to pay your property taxes with your registration and there is no way to do that without a successful safety inspection. The shop should be able to get it inspected before next Wednesday.

With fall coming up I am eager to be able to drive the car again before it gets too cold to comfortably drive with the top down. Here’s hoping they get it sorted and I can make that happen.