2 Questions..

The belt on my alt/pulleys/accessories etc looks alittle dry. Being that it is rubber, can i put some kind of dressing on it to ease the dryness..? I was thinking armor all, or some kind of light silicone etc.. Or will doing this, make the belt weak, and make it fray.



Doesn't a cars alternator recharge the 12v battery to the proper amount to ensure a decent battery life..? Or does it just charge it enough to get by so to speak.



PS, i asked my friend if he thinks i should remove my +/-'s and recharge my batter with my outboard charger/starter. He said i should because the alt only charges it alittle bit, just enough to make the car turn over.

if u think the belt is cracked or dry just replace it. generally it will be fine as long as its charging properly...and yea u should disconnect the battery to fully charge it, ur friend is right

The alternator does a pretty darn good job of properly charging it. The old style potentiometer style regulators were pretty effective, but today's cars are controlled by very sophisticated internal regulators that do an excellent job. The alternators today for the most part are more than adequate for whatever you throw at them, and the regulator is very good at determining how much juice goes out to the battery and system depending on what draws are on and the condition of the battery.

Suffice it to say that if everything is working properly, its a no-brainer.

I have a 96 Impala SS with a 140-amp alternator and I've run some low-power amps since new. Its now almost 9 years old with 88,000 miles and I just replaced the original battery two years ago... and thats mostly because I felt like it was "time" not because it failed. That's not typical, but it is possible with today's electronics.

Hey thanks guys..

Curtis, stop mentioning that SS please.. I WANT THAT CAR :-)

If you noticed I took the link for that car out of my signature. Between that link and the ones for the Bonneville and Wagon, I was getting really close to exceeding my bandwidth on the server :) I had almost 1000 visits to those three pages in a few weeks.