So the bird has been having this terribly intermittent charging issue over about the past year or so.  I could be cruising down the road and all of a sudden the voltmeter goes from 13+ volts to 8.  It doesn’t kill the car, just hangs out at 8 and keeps it running as long as I want with it sometimes ramping back up to the 13+ volts.  I had just assumed it was the PS leaking and killing yet another alternator.  So a while back I ordered a nice Powermaster alt with the relocation kit to move it into the old EGR spot courtesy of CBR Performace located right in my home state.

So this morning I go to do some prep work on the mod by installing a new alt pigtail since I couldn’t complete the job until I go to get a new sized belt and since this is my DD for the most part I couldn’t tear apart stuff I can’t fix the same day.  And I figured that if I am going to go through all the trouble of relocating the alternator and re-wiring the exiter wire that I might as well freshen the olug since it is bound to be coated with PS fluid.  When I get down there and drop the alt, I noticed something that I never caught before despite the numerous times I’ve had the alt off.  Someone has already spiced in a replacement exiter pigtail before I bought the car.  And man was it a hack job.  It was a crimp only job which is pretty much fine, I just prefer solder and heatshrink myself.  But the replacement pigtail was 12GA wire where the original is 18GA so there was a change in resistance along the path to the alt which could be causing it’s own issues.

And then I took a closer look at the plug itself and it is a wonder that it was charging at all.  This is what it looked like.  It also had about an eighth of an inch play in and out of the weather pack.

So as a stop gap, and to get the car running right again, I just snipped off the end, stripped both sides, fluxed and soldered them together.  Unfortunately my heat gun is at one of my offices so I had to try and use a hair dryer to shrink the wrap, eventually I was satisfied with the shrinkage.  Another crap point I found when putting in the new pigtail is that the 12GA wire that was used in the previous spice was aluminum and not copper so that was another negative.  I haven’t had a chance to test drive it yet put as soon as I put the battery back in to back it off the ramps it was immediately back up to 13+ volts so I think this will hold until I have the time to relocate the alt itself and put the new unit in.