Might be a blown head gasket, might not... How to tell?

That sounds like you nailed it!

I could be mistaken, but I think an alternator can handle a 'dead' deep
cell battery without damaging either the battery or the alternator.
Lots of us folks with off road lights and winches use deep cell as well
as the marine engines still have to charge the things up and I don't
think their alternators are different. We also don't see a lot of
burned out alternators from the battery charging, usually mud gets ours.
;-)

Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00
88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's

Don Bruder wrote:
>
> In article >,
> Mike Romain > wrote:
>
> > I don't think I saw a new gas filter in there anywhere.... One getting
> > plugged up can cause your symptoms. You need to give it too much gas
> > pedal to flow fast, then the filter clears with a flood.
>
> Current filter was put in new at about the same time the multiple carb
> rebuilds happened. Not likely to be a problem.
>
> On the "good news" front...
>
> Problems came to a head last night - Car ended up sidelined, totally
> dead. Couldn't get it to crank. Managed to push-start it and get it back
> to base, although it was a battle keeping it running. Once back in the
> parking lot at work, it proceeded to unceremoniously die. Didn't have my
> meter with me, so couldn't chase wire/voltage issues, but came to the
> pretty obvious (Lack of headlights, radio, turn signals, etc is a bit of
> a giveaway, no?) conclusion that the battery was dead. Had it dragged
> home by the big yellow truck (Thank you, AAA... Last night was a prime
> example of why I pay 80 bucks a year for the privilege of toting around
> a chunk of plastic - The hookup would have run me $62, and the actual
> "get it from here to there" would have weighed in around $170, for a
> total of close to triple what I pay for having the card. Am I gonna
> renew come July? You damn well better believe I am!) and slapped the
> battery charger on it overnight. Come daylight, got up, jumped in it,
> and turned the key. The usual "vrooom", and it ran like a champ. Ran it
> up and down the hill a few times, and saw no sign of the problems that
> led to the original posting. Parked it, shut it down, and went back
> inside to tell work I'd be able to make it tonight if they need me. Went
> back out to feed the horses, and when I tried to start it again, it was
> seriously "draggy" about starting, but once it caught, it ran well.
> Meter on the battery showed me 12.13 volts - Uh-oh... Can we say
> "alternator pukage"?
>
> Wire the meter into the circuit between alternator output and battery -
> It's giving me a grand and glorious 2.61 volts worth of output.
>
> Looks to me like it's time to collect on that Autozone lifetime
> warranty... Charge the battery back up, head down the hill, pull the
> alternator in the parking lot, and drag it in to be tested. Sure enough,
> machine says that the diode-trio is fried. Gonna honor my warranty? Sure
> thing! Swap pulleys (new one came with a serpentine pulley installed,
> mine runs off a V-belt) and strap the new one in. Check the battery
> voltage. 11.96. Drag the battery inside to be topped up so I don't cook
> off the nice shiney new alternator before travelling a mile. Meter on
> battery - 12.71. Good enough. Fire it up wth meter connected. Voltage
> sags to 12.3 while cranking then jumps to 13.73 within a second or two
> after the engine catches. Excellent - alternator working properly.
>
> Drive it home. Hit the usual "most likely spot" for the misfiring to
> happen. No sign of it. Do everything I can to replicate it. No luck.
> Multiple trips up and down Lakeside Hill - Can't make the problem I've
> been seeing happen, no matter how hard I try. Looks like the missing was
> a symptom of low (and steadily getting lower...) voltage.
>
> This problem has been getting slowly worse over the course of the past
> couple of weeks. Interestingly enough, now that I'm actually thinking
> about it, the alternator belt shredded itself about 3 weeks ago. I
> managed to get the car home to where I had the stuff to deal with
> changing the belt, swapped the new one on, and didn't think anything of
> it. It was a couple of days later that the missing/hesitation started.
> And gradually got worse until last night, when I dragged it into the
> parking lot running like it had one cylinder, and that one was blown.
>
> I'm guessing that driving it home with the blown alternator belt drained
> the battery far enough that when I put the fresh belt on, the alternator
> either died, or got severely crippled, then spent the last couple of
> weeks dying, until finally it gave up completely, and left me running on
> battery only - Until THAT died, too...
>
> Putting a fresh charge on the battery made it run like the proverbial
> raped ape until shutdown. Fresh alternator and topped up battery seems
> to have cleared the trouble completely.
>
> Boy, I'm really glad that I didn't pull the head now... Would have been
> a serious waste of effort, I'm thinking...
>
> Yes, I know that a drained battery is generally a
> not-long-for-this-world battery - Sholdn't be an issue here, since I'm
> running a marine starting/deep-cycle battery in this car. For a while, I
> was using the car as a mobile "lights and camera" platform for some
> nocturnal filming, and wasn't able to run the engine to power the
> "toys". The deep-cycle battery has held up quite well to repeated
> drain/charge cycles from powering the gear I've been using. I expect
> it'll treat this incident as not all that much different than the times
> I've fallen asleep while waiting for my "actors" to arrive on scene, and
> woke up to a near-dead battery.
>
> Next concept: Heavy-duty alternator...
>
> I'm wondering if paralleling two, three, or even more fairly
> high-current diodes in each position inside the alternator wouldn't
> "beef it up" enough to cope with the idea of bringing the battery back
> from all-but-dead without frying the trio...
>
> --
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