I was on vacation in Florida when suddenly I noticed that the abs light came on. Then another idiot light came on and the car started to buck when I tried to accelerate. The battery in the car was six years old so I have been expecting it to die any day. I put a new battery in the car and everything worked perfectly. Turns out it wasn't the battery but the alternator. I didn't expect the alternator was the cause because the charge light never came on so I figured that the battery was still being charged. A couple of days later I just barely got back to the motel and the battery was dead again. Charged the battery back up and drove to the nearest Ford dealer as I figured that this might need a more involved diagnosis. He said I needed a new alternator. After that no problems. I checked out the charging and everything looks good.
I guess the charging light never came on because the failure was in the regulator. I read somewhere that the light on dash goes into the regulator circuit. The alternator can be generating voltage just fine but if the regulator isn't working correctly the light on your dash won't ever go on to let you know you have a problem.
I think that I'll put a voltmeter in the car with an audible alarm when the voltage drops down too low so I will be aware if this problem occurs again.
Just goes to show you, just when you though that you saw it all.
