Saturday 7 April 2018

The Alternator

Someone on some blog was telling a car story recently and it made me think of this epic story.

Back in 1994, my husband and I decided to do a road trip from Sydney down to Melbourne and then catch the ferry to Tasmania and drive around Tasmania for a little bit. We set off in our white Cortina and soon after leaving home we started to have some trouble keeping the battery charged. The first couple of times it failed we got a jump start and carried on. It became obvious that we would need to replace the alternator so we got hold of a reconditioned one at one of our stops and my husband put it in the car.
After a little while we started having trouble with the new alternator and away from his tools, my husband was not able to fix it any further. By this time we were in Tasmania, heading toward the South West Coast. It was the middle of winter and we were coming into a declining mining town. I have never before or since seen a place so grey and God forsaken. The skies were grey, the houses were grey, there was not a blade of grass or a green leaf to be seen. The air was cold and there was a bitter wind blowing.
We stopped at a local garage where the mechanic was burning old engine oil to keep warm. He agreed to fix our alternator and with nowhere really to go, we hung around waiting. The mechanic was in no hurry and having swapped the alternator on the car a couple of times before, my husband had it down to a fine art. He got tired of waiting and when the alternator was ready to be put back in the car, my husband informed the mechanic that he would like to do it himself. ( It has been interesting for me to note that something like 13 years later our son aptly dubbed his dad "The Captain") My jaw hung  open just slightly as The Captain all but snatched the part from the hapless mechanic and bolted it in.
Our alternator troubles continued on and off until we got home at the end of a two week holiday but once back in Sydney, there was no more drama and it was soon forgotten.

It was a couple of years later that we were taking the long drive to Queensland for a funeral and as it happened,  my parents were following in their car. Towards the end of the day I was driving and though I wasn't aware that I couldn't see well, I later found out that Dad thought I was driving as though I couldn't see. It didn't take too long before my headlights were noticeably weak, a couple of torches on the front of the car would have done a better job, and when we stopped the car didn't re-start. The battery was completely drained.
I had a toddler in the car, was six months pregnant, many kilometres from home and had a funeral to get to the next day. When the friendly man from the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland arrived and asked what the problem was I had a small rush of blood to the head and told him that "the alternator is rat shit".
He looked a bit surprised. I don't know if Dad laughed at the time but he hasn't stopped laughing about it since.
The RACQ man got in touch with an auto-electrician who made the drive down a mountain in the dark to see what was happening. I explained to the sparky that every time we drove a distance, we had this problem with the alternator. He took a long look under the bonnet and explained that when the (after market) air conditioning had been installed, the alternator had been moved and in it's new position, a long trip would cause enough vibration from the body of the car to disconnect the wiring.
It was a revelation and the hassles of the past were suddenly all explained. I thought he was an angel in overalls.
We went and got pizza for our dinner while the auto electrician worked on the car.
The charge for his service was $35. I was never in the habit of giving any kind of tip but I refused to take change from a fifty and even then I thought it was the best deal I ever got in my life.

I don't think either of those men would remember us but I will never forget them.


24 comments:

  1. I would have liked to have been around to see the expression on the face of the electrician when you mentioned the alternator!

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    1. I'm sure my dad would tell you!!!

      It was pure shock

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    2. Alternator trouble is hard to forget. I have had my share of it, too. What is a torchy. I know a torch is a flashlight. I doubt the mechanic in Tasmania had ever had anyone snatch a part away and install it himself. That is funny. Is your husband the take-charge type?

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    3. ah yes, torchy was a typo for torch but thinking about it, I should have said candles!
      I felt sorry for the Tasmanian mechanic, I see that at last census that town only had 700+ people so he was probably never under any time pressure!

      Yes, my husband likes to take charge and with that kind of thing he is very very competent, which makes it worse.....

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  2. Oh what great stories! A mechanic or "sparky" that can diagnose a problem accurately THE FIRST TIME, is worth their weight in gold! They are the salt of the earth. I would have tipped generously and gratefully as well, and have often enough.

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    1. I look at that $35 charge and think now there would be a $200 call out fee before he even looked at it!

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  3. Hooray for Angels in Overalls. Which is the perfect description.

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    1. Men in overalls surely are angels much more often than they are given credit for.

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  4. You might be surprised by what those men remembered, kylie - my dad was a mechanic and was often called by far-flung neighbours if there was a motorist passing through who was having car trouble. He remembered some of those folks years and years later! (especially the kind ones)

    This story also reminds me of the car my husband owned when we met. Every time we'd go any distance in that thing and stopped for a few minutes, it wouldn't start again until it cooled down. It was years before it was "diagnosed." It's frustrating when you can't get it figured out, so I can imagine your relief at finding out what the problem was.

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    1. Oh boy! waiting for a car to cool down really takes a long time, what a pest!
      I have car stories as long as my arm, I have even forgotten some of them

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  5. Electrical problems can be a real pain in the proverbial.

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    1. cars are generally fabulous inventions until they don't work!

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  6. Great story with a simple solution. Electrical problems that stop you are most frustrating.

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    1. it was the ongoing nature of it that got me so hot under the collar!

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  7. That's an amazing story. What luck that you happened on someone who could see exactly what the problem was and how to put it right. Who would have guessed it was a re-positioned alternator vibration problem? And he drove down a mountain to help you. Well worth the $50, that's for sure.

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    1. Yes, it was worth it. We made it to the funeral in Brisbane the next day and then stopped at the hot springs in Moree and Dubbo Zoo on the way home. None of that would have been much fun without getting it fixed

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  8. Here in the US FORD means Fix Or Repair Daily, and the Cortina being British built well that says a about all there is to say about 70-80's Fords.

    Given a complete history of the problem is most likely what led the last technician to look in a different direction than the part itself. One bad rebuilt part is not uncommon but a series of them? Nah, I cam't see it Kylie. After 35 years in the trade and working on the most abused cars in Detroit (police cars--Fords by the by) I have some stories.

    My favorite is one car, an odometer and speedometer that registered twice the actual distance and speed, 12 mechanics before it got to me, a repair, and an immediate send off to the auction block. That car is most likely still carrying passengers as a cab to this day.

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    1. I have heard the F O R D acronym before! Some people here identify as a Ford man or a Holden man. My brother is a Holden man and knows every way to insult Ford. It's all quite irrelevant now that Holden is not manufactured here.

      Looking back it is obvious that it wasn't the part but with another twenty years behind us I have realised that my husband would rather die than admit that a problem with a car was beyond him. He's a talented home mechanic but without the education to figure out the unexpected.

      It doesn't surprise me at all that your cop car passed through 12 mechanics and you actually fixed it!

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  9. Modern day cars are so much more reliable than old school cars used to be. I don't know if it is the same in Australia but here in England we hardly ever see cars broken down at the side of the road. In the past, this was certainly not the case. Things were always going wrong.

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    1. I do remember cars broken down by the road, I still see them but probably not so many. Our cars are nearly always 15+ years old so my experience of cars is a bit skewed

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  10. "the alternator is rat shit". Haha. That made me laugh. I'm glad the guy sorted out your car problems, and I'm sure he was delighted with the tip!

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    1. haha yea, sweet young mum i was not in that moment!

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  11. Cortinas didn't make it to the States. What was the mechanic burning engine oil in?

    "Do not cheer the death of your enemy but instead weep for love that could have been, but wasn't. ~ Annie Ha"

    Some of my worst enemies are people like Donald Trump who I have never met and will never meet and should they die, my one regret would be that they were ever born.

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  12. My comment disappeared--God knows why. To make it short, Cortinas were not sold in the States (I even looked them up to verify this fact). I don't know if I had ever even heard of a Cortina before reading your post. Now to add something new...

    Your "rat shit" comment could be transferred to all kinds of situations. For instance, when you go to the doctor and he or she asks you what's wrong, you can say, "Well, Doc, my pancreas is rat shit." Then he can say, "Well, I've seen a lot of rat shit in my day, and your pancreas looks a lot more like dog vomit to me."

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