No electric at all!

I

Isaac-1200

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Ok guys I'm Isaac and I've been driving my 89 lincoln mark vii lsc everyday since july. Earlier tonight my alternate bearing went bad and it locked up then burnt my belt. No problem for me. got it fixed. not even drivin 3 minutes down the down the road my lights shut off an my engine bogs down! so i pull over and i smell tht nasty electic crap. The key is on but nothing else is no lights no gauge lights no radio nothing! I replaced the solenoid still nothing. No power to anything. I read that a bad ignition switch can burn out the fuse links. i cut a couple of them open but i have no idea how to check if they are bad. I will say i know my ignition switch is bad i have it rigged with a piece of string to stay in place. My question. What should i start replacing to get my driver back on the road? Ignition switch? then the fusable links? and if they dont fix it then what? Do I take it to a garage? I mean i am pretty well rounded with this crap. If i cannot get it then its scrap time or im gonna carb it with a push button ignition which id rather not do. It only has 65k miles on it 4k of which i put on.

Thanks guys I really appreciate it and if i win the lottery one day you all get a slice:)
 
2 days is not a long time to wait on this forum.

For about a year, I thought I had a dying battery ('88 LSC). I lived with that by charging it all the time. Recently, my lights went out while driving.. I knew the car wouldn't run for long and luckily we were close to home.

The shop tested the system for free... It took about 5 minutes... wheeled a little machine to the car, used an iinductive clamp to check voltages and amperages. Voltages were good. Battery was good under load, but the alternator was delivering only 20 amps. Supposed to be ~100A.

A car will run (for a while) on the battery alone. Lights, ignition etc can feed off the battery's stored energy. But if that energy is not replenished, the car dies. Lights will go first. Then ignition. The more electrical accessories in use, the quicker it will happen.

If your car starts and runs on a fully charged battery, I suspect your new alternator was not / is not charging the battery, and recommend you have the system checked before you further cut into things.

65K miles.... ?
I got over 265K miles on this one and believe me nothing is being held on with wire or duct tape.... It's an extremely reliable car. I'd drive cross country without a second thought.
 
chris2523 said:
especially on the VII side of things.
not a lot of traffic over here.
patience.
Click to expand...

really... only reason I dropped in was email said I had a new PM (Happy Thanksgiving from admin... Same to you and everyone else.). Otherwise nothing's happening with my car, and I might not be here for months.

Didn't mean to be harsh with Isaac-1200, but only 65K miles made me jealous. Drives it everyday and ignition is secured with string?

Maybe it got stolen and someone yanked it out.. I dunno.. but these old cars require care and attention. "Little" things go wrong all the time. Fix it right and don't put it off or one thing leads to another, and that will lead to your car becoming one of my parts-cars at the wrecking yard.
 
thanks guys:) i really appreciate your time to post for me. I figured the problem out. The batt post on the alternator had a tear in the rubber protector and it was grounding to the engine. Why would they put that right on the bottom. I dont know. But shes working again. I also replaced my ignition switch because i was tired of the string lol. Alternators working the battery is fine. Im sorry i got all impatient. Its just when you cant figure something stupid out I start panicking and get all mad. I was like looks like im taking this pos to the scrap yard lol.
 
I just had to say this lol! But I didnt have any of those fancy torque stars to remove the igntion switch bolts so I took a flat head scew driver from the 50's that I had and a claw hammer and chisseled grooves into the bolts and unscrewed them with a flat head its pretty badass. I mean screw those screws pun intended. Im so drunk ;)
 
You are not alone. When something bad happens my first reaction is panic and I think about dumping it. California will actually pay me $1,000 for some smog thing (gross polluter?) if I dump it. Only reason that hasn't happened yet is difficulties finding another car I like as much as this one.

Harbor Freight has cheap but adequate tools of all sorts, particularly hand tools, like the odd wrenches and drivers etc.

I've done almost everything myself but for all those "common" car problems the shop is always worth a phone call or an estimate.

For instance, I was gonna replace that alternator myself after he said it was bad (test cost nothing). I bought a rebuilt at O'Reillys for ~$100, but couldn't switch the pulleys (no impact wrench) so took everything back to the shop and they finished the job for ~$65. Can't beat that imo.

Same guys recently tested and recharged the AC, and ended up converting from R12 to R134a. Cost me about $160. (I already bought a cheap set of gauges and did some studying and intended on hacking it out myself... but glad I didn't.)

Gotta pass smog in a couple months and the shop says the high-hydrocarbons trouble is catalytic converters... I dunno yet but probably a couple hundred bucks there...

Good for you on that ignition switch... Although they are old now, it's really well built, and it can be a nice car to drive and play around with.
 
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