Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Alternator Headaches

I have a 1998 Ford Contour (V6 2.5L). Recently I replaced the alternator with a re-man. one in order to fix some battery charging problems I had been having. Once we got the old alternator off and checked the brushes we could see that they were indeed bad and the alternator seemed it would need machined as well.

After placing the re-man. on we measured only around 12.5 volts on the battery and even less when we would turn lights, radio and the heater on. My brother-in-law has a 99 and his read around 14 volts (I am told between 13.5 and 14.5 is a good reading). So - I ripped the re-man off and went and bought a brand-new one. Guess what - still reading 12 odd volts.

We traced the wires and tested them from the battery to the alternator and everything seems to check out - checked the visible fuses I could find and everything good there. Took the alternator off and went and had it tested. It's good. We noticed a dim charging system light when we start the car -- thing is if we force the ground on the regulator (external on this alternator) then the charging light is bright. We checked the ground on the alternator and it seems grounded.

We are at a loss and don't know where to look next. All wires seem good and we heard that the light in the instrument cluster runs parallel with a resistor and were wondering if that could be the culprit. Any help is much appreciated!

ben985@comcast.net
-sgt pritchard

i checked the 1996 Frod service CD for my 96 contour... there is a maga fuse located between the power from the alternator(red wire) that goes to the battery..... this is probably what you have to locate..... i found it by looking at the electrical schematics... just named Mega Fuse and it is 75 amps.....to see if it is bad i would put a meter between the red wire going to the battery and the red wire coming from the alternator... if there is no continuity then you know the fuse is bad.. sorry i dont know where it is located... if you do have continuity then it might be located in the Power distribution box right behind the battery.... hope this helps.....
let us know if you find it and correct the problem.. if not also let us know. i will keep looking to see if i can get the locations of it.. also when looking in the power distribution box it list the power of the fuses... i would check all 70 amp. fuses in there to make sure none are buned out.. check it with a continuity meter to make sure... you say you had a bad alternator on it and that is why you changed the alt.. well it might have blown the fuse and this is what you have to replace... hope this helps.

i made a mistake its a 75 AMP fuse, Not a 70 amp like i mentioned in the earlier post... sorry.

Ok - well my father-in-law checked the wires from the battery to the alternator and I think we found the mega fuse and from what I remember it all seemed to test good. I heard rumors of a fuse under the dash possibly in a wire cluster that in some vehicles controls the alternator turning on and off - your idea of having blown something sounds good though - something strange was that we noticed what the manual says was my fog light fuse being blown - when we replaced it we seemed to notice a slight shift in the volts if I remeber - maybe we should check the wires again - ANY other ideas are much appreciated. Thanks!
-sgt pritchard

i just checked my power distibution box(located under the hood next to the battery.. it has an 80 amp. fuse for fuse no. 1 the rest are low power..... have father in law check that fuse first...i would copy and past a copy of the charging system, but i think the ford cd is not letting me copy the pictures from the cd.... if its not the 80 amp. fuse have him check all the fuses located in the power dist. box... dont worry about the relays in there(they are all marked via the picture with a R1,R2, etc.. the fuses are just No. 1,2,3, etc.....
the bigger fuses are shaped like little boxes and not like the fuses in the fuse panel under the dash....
hope this helps..
and yes you should be getting about 13.5 to 14.5 volts with the engine running from the alternator.. if you are only getting 12.6 voltrs the alternator is not putting out at all and you are only getting a reading from the battery.. you run it down and form not using it the battery itself will re-energize itself by just sitting there..... but not enough to really charge itself back up to full power......

You are being extremely helpful - I appreciate it - we'll check into that - you have a ford cd huh - that's cool. Thanks again.

Wiring Diagram

i did that too it was great except i did it like three times. sounds like the same problem that i had. i needed to replace the three wire connector going to the alternator and it fixed my problem. have someone look at the charging light with the key on while ur under the car wiggling the connector. if u get intermittent bright spots then more than likely the connector needs to be replaced. i think it was like $12 or something from ford.

Mike

Turns out after all the trouble and replacing the stinking mega fuse (a bear to get to) we go to ground out the alternator to see if it will put out the max voltage - its nearing night and as we touch the housing we see a spark. Yea so that shouldn't be there - seems the ground wire for the engine was only occasionally grounding - I am wondering if when they replaced the tranny if they stripped the threads out because the bolt pulled right out. So a trip to get a longer bolt and running an additional ground wire proved to fix it. So 2 alternators later (needed replaced anyway), a mega fuse, traced wires, a pulled cluster and 3 weeks (only worked on it on the weekends) I'm back on the road. I have one final issue though...

Seems when I finished up that now my airbag light flashes on and off. 5 flashes and then itâ??s off for a few seconds and then continually does this. I can't tell if I blew a fuse or something needs reset in the computer (pulling the battery didn't fix it). Not sure if pulling the cluster out did this or what but I never touched the airbag - anyone have any ideas? Thanks to everyone that gave input - it was very much appreciated!
-sarge