i agree with bryan on killing your alternator when jumping off a dead battery.
most people think an alternator will eventually recharge a dead battery. this is simply not the case, an alternator will not fully recharge a dead battery. most people get this thinking from when cars used generators and not alternators. a generator uses permanent magnets in it and when rotated will produce an electrical charge all by itself (self exciting). a car with a dead battery and a generator for a charging device when jumpered off will eventually recharge a dead battery. these old cars that used generators also had heavy duty mechanical point type voltage regulators with vibrating contactors, and usually had tungsten or platinum irridium contacts. an alternator on the other hand requires some sort of initial electrical charge or stimulus running thru the coil to get it to start working. the alternators in our cars use a solid state full wave rectifier , with a solid state voltage regulator set up in them. these alternators are designed to top off a good battery after you start your car, come on line and off line periodically as your electrical load increases or decreases during driving. your solid state regulator in the unit will do this as the battery voltage drops below a certain pre determined level. a solid state regulator is not designed to run continuously. which is what it would be doing if you jumpered off a TD or any other alternator equipped car with a dead battery. the regulator would see the battery as having mebbe a residual 9V and would keep its solid state contactor closed to try to get the battery to a state of 13.5V you can see that this would burn it out. if not the first time you do it eventually it will burn out from this type of abuse. an alternator is designed to only maintain a 13.5V charge in a battery, top the battery off after you start your car, and maintain it in a topped off condition while you are driving and using your accessories. my wife used to own a nissan sentra, we were coming back to abilene texas from little rock arkansas on a sunday afternoon and the battery lost one of its cells about 100 miles from home. the alternators solid state regulator kept its contacts closed trying to fill the wounded battery up. by the time we got home i had to put in a new battery and a new alternator. hope this helps mat -----------------------REMOVE-FOOTER-WHEN-REPLYING---------------------------- Questions? Visit http://www.sdml.org/ To be removed, visit http://www.sdml.org/pages/leave.html
