Bill

Well for the past month or so I've had to deal with this annoying ping. I thought at first it was some mild detonation so I richened it up a bit. Still there. Richened some more...still there. PIG friggin' rich...still there. Nope, not detonation. Fast forward to last weekend, I'm driving in the rain, car loses power all of a sudden, regains it, a couple minutes later it does the same thing, rinse, repeat. Figured it had to be electrical what with the rain and the way it felt when it cut out. So this Sunday I begin my troubleshooting. Harness looks fine, battery is fine, alternator...uh oh. Yup, the belt was loose as holy hell (yup...that loose). Turns out the lower nut that helps keep the alternator tensioned came off. Well anyone that knows me knows I'm one anal bastard. I torque damn near everything to spec so I couldn't figure out how this hapened. Well while I was putting on a new nut...I found out how. The lower bolt was not correctly seated in its groove so although it was tightened, it managed to twist around over time, fall back into its groove, and at that point, rattle the nut off and lose tension on the belt. So...if you're untensioning the alternator for any reason, make damn sure you've got it seated correctly. Just a friendly reminder from an asshole.