Dateline - May 24 - I thought about the alternator problem all night and most of the day and could not figure out the problem. I dug through the schematics and manuals that I got with the car, and the only thing I could think of was the Lucas regulator, which was still wired into the car. I started pulling wires and plugs, but nothing would stop the squeal. I was about to give up, when I though, "Maybe it is the battery". After all, if the alternator was bad, maybe it took out the battery. I started the car and pulled the negative terminal from the battery and guess what! It ran like a top! No squeals, no noise, and the car seemed like it had a large load taken from it. I took the battery out and went to Schucks. They tested it and said it was good. I was not going to buy another battery just to find out that is not the problem, so I went home kind of dejected.
I decided to try to figure out why the water drain hole on the left tank was not working, so I pulled the rear bumper and the left bottom fender valance, which exposes the bottom of the tank and discovered that the rubber hose that is supposed to exit out a hole in under the car was pushed into the fender. I ran a wire up the whole and cleared out a whole bunch of crud, then after checking that water pored right out, I fitted the fender back, but left the bumper off so that I can polish it.
I then had an idea. Why don't I pull one of the batteries from my trailer and try it. I know you should not use deep cycle batteries on cars, but this was just a test. I pulled the battery and it worked! So, I needed to get a new battery. I felt pretty good and decided to give the car a wash. I put about five hours of work in. Not a bad day!
