[AMC-list] That was wierd !!!

["Armand Eshleman" <aje1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Saturday Afternoon I went to Spirit Lake, IA for a cruise in. People were
swarming around the white Javelin.
It drew more attention than I have eve seen it draw before. I don't think
there was more than a half an hour total
time for a four hour stay that some one wasn't looking at the car. There was
maybe 100 to 150 cars there.
About 8:30 I noticed, and so did everyone else, that it was beginning to
cloud up in the Western sky.
I got very unlucky and ran through a flippin monsoon rain storm on th way
home.
The Javelin reacted very unusual to this event. Back in the 70s I had driven
the car
through a few monsoons that you couldn't really even see the road, and
Saturday nights storm
wasn't that bad, but anyway, the engine began to stumble and it almost acted
like the rear wheels
were hydro-planing, but then I realized the engine was shutting down
momentarily and then re-lighting
itself before it completely died. It almost flet like the clutch was wet and
slipping, and then would dry up again and grab.
But it was an electric glitch. As I got closer to home I noticed the
headlights were dimming and I then suddenly realized
why the wipers moved so slow, no electric power from the battery.........but
the alternator should have been working, the belt stayed on the whole time,
the alternator is a light duty one, I think 35 or 40 amps. I just barely got
the car home, it began to run real crappy. Apparently with low voltage and
an MSD Pro Billet ready to run Distributor you get real weak spark events.
The alternator light never came on. I got home and pulled the battery out
and dropped in a different one. The engine ran fine then.........the battery
that was in the car, an optima about five years old, seemed like it didn't
want to accept a charge when I hooked up a ten amp charger to it. It pulled
a steady 8 to 10 amps for a while and didn't pull less for a long time. I
thought at first the battery had dropped a cell or something. So I backed
the car out of the shop and washed all the road grime off and put it away
for the evening. This morning I put the optima battery back in the car and
it started the car just fine, after having failed to turn the engine over
last night after I got the car home. I put the charger back on and let it go
for a while. The alternator light would come on when I turned the key to on,
but when the engine fired up, the alternator light would go out. That's
normal. I drove the car about 170 miles today to New Ulm and back and never
experienced a glitch of any kind. Any one got any theories? electrics got
wet?? wet short? drained battery? when I got it home the compartment heat
dried everything up and it was OK then?????
Do you think the optima battery has been damaged??
What do you guys think?
Inquisitive minds want to know...................

Thanks,

Armand

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