Parts for car recovery and other

   Saturday - October 10, 2009 Dirty Saturday

No, not that way. I wish!

Nope, it was car repair day.

Last month the old Saturn wouldn’t start. So I got a jump start and went on my way. Smart boy put the jumper cables in the trunk. When I was on my way back, the car wouldn’t start again. I figured it was time for a new battery. The last one was a 3 year model that I got just over 8 years out of I think. Fair enough. So off to Walmart, and in with a potent new battery. Problem solved. Car starts just fine. 5 weeks go by. Somewhere in that period the power door lock switch on the driver’s door gave out. No more power doors. I’ll have to do something about that someday ... but not this day. Thursday the car wouldn’t start. Aww crap. Well, the battery is new, right, so it must be the alternator. Right? Right. Take the wife’s little hot rod down to the auto parts store, get a new alternator. No core charge! Brand new, not remanufactured. Costs more than the OEM Delco part online, but it’s right here, right now. I’ll take it. Then it started to rain.

The rain let us early this afternoon, and it wasn’t too crisp outside, so off to toolville I go. Looked up how to do it on the forums, found a video at YouTube. They helped somewhat. “It’s a 15 minute job” says one source. Yeah right. Ok, so I got it done in just over 2 1/2 hours, but that included jacking the car up and down and taking the tire on and off so I could get at the underside of the engine. On a Saturn, the alternator is mounted on the back of the engine, down behind the power steering pump. And the engine sits sideways - transverse mounted for front wheel drive - so the alternator is actually just over the driveshaft. Halfshaft? Whatever they call the rods that actually spin the wheels to make the car go. The key to the whole job is to take the front right wheel off, and then pull off the plastic bits that form the wheel well. After that you can actually get at most parts of the engine. From the top all you can get to is the spark plugs and the battery.

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