Oh wow. Yes, it is these small quirks that drive me mad! Although, to quote someone from this forum..."when she's running fine, there's nothing else on the road I would rather drive." I think I had sort of an epiphany where I slowly connected the dots. I guess I thought it was an unrelated problem:
when I first inherited this car from my father last June (who cured himself of his obsession with this car by giving it to me..) a week or so later I had a seized pulley on the alternator. So I got that replaced with a low-miles used one. It had been 10 months since this incident, and two months ago, I started experiencing horrible squealing sounds on startup, and after 5 seconds it would go away. In the process of replacing my belts to try to rid the squealing, I noticed the the noise was gone with no alternator belt. I put the belts on, but the squealing did not go away. So I narrowed it down to a bad bearing. Whenever I turn the truck off, my battery light flashes for a second as I am turning turning it off. Sometimes, when I load the pulley/bearing up with some good ol WD40 the squealing goes away AND the battery light does not come on when turning the truck off. Once the lubricant dries out though, the problem is bad. Do the dots seem to be connecting? Could it be my alternator??
I will also add that for pretty much 6 or 7 months straight, this problem was non-existant!
|
