Hey fellas. Been looking this up for two days can’t seem to get it figured out. Brake and battery light popped on last Friday and car died. After confirming it was the alternator got it jumped off and back to the house. I’m not a car guy but I can generally figure things out and my mechanics taught me a few things with some instructions how I got the alternator out was: I drain the radiator so I could remove a few hoses so the radiator fans could come out and the passenger side tire came off so I can get to the bottom side of the alternator.

After a few days of you busted knuckles in a can of PB blaster I finally got that second long go through bolt off from behind the tire. I pulled the alternator up to the top of the engine. I got everything put back together refilled the radiator cracked her up and tested her in the driveway and around the block for about 20 minutes. The only issue I had when I initially made the repairs were the battery light and the brake light remained on. Not going to lie I got kind of transfixed on that and didn’t even test if the AC was working or not. I’ll let the wife take the car to work because I was convinced everything was all right but after she drove off walking back up toward the house I noticed that she may have had a coolant leak.

she only works 5 miles away from the house but I called her and told her to keep an eye on the temperature gauge she said on her way to work or at three this morning when she was coming home it never went past halfway, but when she got home the radiator had definitely lost a good bit of coolant it was an empty but it definitely wasn’t full. I refilled it got the car warm back up and tested the AC and discovered that the AC wasn’t actually blowing air out of the vents. You can hear the air blowing behind the dash and as you turn the fan up you can hear the fan getting higher and speed but there’s definitely no air coming out of the vents.

i’ve been at it for a couple hours on Google and I have read about 50 or so threads and I can’t find my exact situation. I found many threads that reference a plug that sits just under the alternator that is supposed to have something to do with the AC I never unplugged that plug during my removal or installation and looking at the plug now it seems OK. I’ve looked over all the AC lines and it doesn’t go to hit anything or anything is damaged.

anyone got any advice or can anyone point me in the direction of a nice comprehensive thread on the topic. Thanks in advance.

 

Update: man no replies? Can’t seem to find a car forum that’s actually active.

after looking everything over I couldn’t figure it out. And old mechanic I ran it by told me to unhook the battery again - even thou it had already been unhooked for days while I was repairing it. He said the comp may not have resort. I unhooked it for about 30 and when I hooked back up everything worked.

 

I feel your pain. I just replaced my alternator too. Major PIA.

Coolant leak - keep an eye on hose connections. The clamps if not tightened correctly, they will cause leaks. This will happen when engine is hot and coolant heats up.

My AC sometimes does exactly what yours did. I can hear the Fan blowing but I cannot feel any air coming out of the vents. However, if I press the button for changing the air flow from just blowing in my face to face/feet etc, the air will eventually come out the vents again. I narrowed it down to some sort of malfunction to the door that controls the air flow. Glad yours work again.

 

Appreciate the reply! Yeah that alt is a beast and I’m not a mechanic like that but I couldn’t pay anyone to do it. ……unfunny you say that about the ac because I was beginning to think it was something like that because even thou I got it working there has been two times since where I could hear it blowing but it wasn’t. Now I can look into the door!