So, I set my car on fire today. No, really… I did. But more on that later. About a week and and half ago my parents and I came back into town from a work conference in Nashville. That was a nightmare unto itself, but not car related so I shant bore anyone with that. I had parked my car at their house while we were out of town and while driving back home that night the Check Gauges light came on and the voltmeter dropped down to around 11 when it is normally around 14. Incidentally, by fuel pressure gauge began working again. So I thought it was just a SNAFU and I would need to check the wiring for shorts. A couple miles down the road everything went back to normal so I didn’t worry about it. A few days later on another trip back from the folks house it happened again with the dash and headlights getting dim so I figured it had to be the alternator.
The power steering pump has been leaking since I bought the car, which at the time EVERYTHING on the car leaked. I didn’t think much of it and just continued to put more fluid in when the need arose. The past few weeks however, the pump has been leaking at a much greater rate. It would only take a couple hours to create an 8 inch spot on the pavement. So I picked up some UV dye and put it in with the latest top off of PS fluid. A couple days later I donned the yellow shades and hit it with my UV light. The underside of the pump looked like some vision from a horror flick with it sobbing giant streams of florescent green. Unfortunately glancing down from there, the inside of the alternator looked like it suffered a nuclear meltdown there was so much green glow emitting from it. I had only put this alternator in 5 months ago when the 13 year old stock unit failed and upgraded to a larger 145 amp unit. Now, I don’t know if it was age or the PS fluid that killed the original but I know that’s what killed this one.
So I ordered a reman pump, new upper radiator hose to get rid of the stock PS cooler and a new cooler to replace it with. The last part finally arrived today so I got to work. Pulled the pulley off, took out the pump. Then I went to remove the alternator and this is where it got hairy. I neglected to follow the prime rule of working on any of the electrical systems in a vehicle. Disconnect the battery. So as I go to disconnect the ground connection, the terminal post catches the grounding strap from the block to the body. Whoooo boy that was some sparks. And heat, which lead to fire. Yep, all the grimy grease/fluid coated PS hoses went up like the fourth of july. Unfortunately I did not have a fire extinguisher in the garage, an error that was corrected later in the day before I hooked things back up. Fortunately I was able to blow the flames out but I am sure I gave myself all kinds of cancer from inhaling the fumes of that junk burning off. Thankfully no actual damage occurred. On the bright side, the alternator is a breeze to pull from the top when the PS pump isn’t there.
So I took the alternator and my receipt to O’Reilly’s for a swap. At first some dude at the counter was just going to make the exchange no questions asked. Must have been a new guy. But unfortunately someone else walk by at just the right moment to overhear and told him to test it first. So when they test it, yup it is dead. But then someone spotted a little PS fluid in there and refused to make the swap after that. So the douche nozzles made me fork out nearly $200 more for a second alternator in less than 6 months. I could have found a better deal on ebay or some such for a stock unit out of a 6.0L HD truck or SUV but with the car being my daily driver and already down for a week, I didn’t want to wait another week to get more parts. I also had to pick up a new ground strap which turned out to be about 5 inches shorter than the one I burned in half. Luckily though I found another hole in the body within the straps reach so I didn’t have to tap another hole for it.
With the new alternator finally back in place I put the new pump in and went about modding the way that the PS fluid was cooled. Here is a picture of the factory cooling system that GM, in all their wisdom, came up with. These are the upper radiator hoses that go from the radiator to the water pump inlet. On the top is what I was installing and on the bottom is the stock hose.
As you can see it is cyborged up with a huge metal piece where it had the return line from the rack coming into it and then back out to the reservoir. I doubt this really did much of anything to actually cool the PS fluid and likely heated it up if anything. Not to mention the disaster waiting to happen should one of the lines in there rupture and cross contaminate fluids.
I decided to mount a Hayden 402 cooler on the body rail that runs across the front just behind the air dam. This should be more than sufficient to keep the PS fluid nice and cool.
Re-installed the pulley, buttoned everything up and topped off the fluids. Went for a short drive and everything seems to be running well and my voltmeter is back up to 14 where it belongs. I guess one of these days I really need to dig into the wiring and find out why my fuel pressure gauge isn’t working. I suspect a grounding issue.
