Some People Shouldn't Work On Their Cars!

A guy came in the shop this week and after talking to him for 20 minutes, it was easy to tell that he should never go under the hood of a car!  It was obvious from his approach to his problems that all he's going to do is cause more damage to the vehicle and his pocketbook!

The vehicle in question was a late 90's Dodge product and he brought me the alternator to check to see if it worked.  The first clue of his ignorance was the fact that he cut the wires to the harness instead of removing a couple of nuts off the back of the unit and removing the harness.  Now when he patches it back, there will be another connection (probably a weak one to boot) and another potential problem in the future.  I tested the alternator and told him it was fine and that's when he told me what happened.

Apparently he was listening to the radio on the vehicle with the engine shut off and ran the battery down.  Now radios don't draw that much current so I asked him if he had turned the key to the 'accessory' position.  He said no because the radio wouldn't work in that position, so he turned the key to 'on'.  Maybe there are more people out there than I think there are, that don't know that when you turn the key to the 'on' position, you energize the whole electrical system, the vehicles computer, the ignition system and the fuel pump.  All this together will put quite a drain on a battery and run it completely down in a matter of a couple of hours, which in this case, it did as the radio faded out on him and the car was dead.

Well apparently he didn't know that and decided to get a jump start to get it going, but the idiot who jumped him (probably was as smart as he was, duh) hooked the cables up backwards.  Oh Crap!  Don't you people know just how much damage you can do to the electrical system on a vehicle by such a mistake?  Especially 2000 and later vehicles!  Well I'm not sure what all took place, but they did get the vehicle started.  The problem was, it wouldn't keep running when they pulled the jumper cables off.  To make matters worse, he told me that the gauges were flashing all over the place and nothing was functioning right.

Here's where 'old school' failed him, since he pulled the cables and the engine died, he automatically assumed that it's the alternator.  You've got a dead battery in the vehicle, that had been run down by leaving the key on with the engine off and you assume it's the alternator?  I guess the key word here is 'assume', you know, when you ass-u-me you make an ASS out of U and ME!  How in hell is the alternator going to work when the battery is dead?  It needs battery voltage to energize and his hooking up the cables backwards probably ruined the regulator, which controls the alternator and unfortunately is also located in this vehicles computer and not the alternator.

The first thing he should have done was get the battery charged and tested, or replaced it with a new one.  That may have solved all of his problems, if there wasn't any damage to the vehicles other electrical components.  It is possible that if the battery was run all the way down, by switching the cables on the jumping vehicle, he could have reversed the polarity in the battery which would change the batteries posts designations from positive to negative and vice-versa!  I wonder what damage they caused to the jumping vehicle too?  If they did reverse the polarity, that would also explain why the car died after pulling the cables.

I'm glad I'm not him, because all this ignorance could cost him upwards of $2,000 to properly repair it and get it back on the road!  He'll be lucky as hell if just replacing the battery fixes everything!  Warning, if you didn't understand any of this post, then stay out from under the hood of your car.  You'll probably damage expensive components if you try working on it yourself!