Just realized I was killing my alternator by ignoring the battery cables

My buddy Dave stopped by my garage in Cleveland last week to check out my '78 Ford F-150 I've been piecing back together. I was complaining about how I'd gone through two alternators in six months and thought I was just unlucky with parts. Dave looked at my battery cables and said 'you got corrosion hiding under that tape, man.' I peeled it back and sure enough there was green crust all the way down to the terminal ends. He told me that bad connections make the alternator work twice as hard to keep the system charged, like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it. I cleaned everything up with a wire brush and some baking soda water mix, put in new crimped ends, and the truck's been starting perfect for three days now. Has anyone else lost parts to something as simple as dirty battery connections before you figured it out?

2 comments

2 Comments

harper_smith16d ago

How much resistance were you actually measuring across those cables before you cleaned them? I'm curious if Dave whipped out a multimeter or just spotted the crust. I've got a '72 C10 that keeps eating voltage regulators and now I'm wondering if my grounds are just as bad. The alternator whine through my radio got worse right before the last one died, that might have been a clue. Did you notice anything weird with your lights dimming or radio acting up before you found the corrosion? Just trying to figure out if I'm chasing a similar ghost.

the_stella16d ago

Oh man, that's a fun one. I didn't actually measure resistance because I don't own a multimeter and I'm not about to borrow Dave's and have him judge me. I just saw green crust and figured, "well that can't be good.