well if they do end up donating it, theres a good charity in closter, 76 harvey st to be exact. Â*i cant remember the name but they take almost any car donation and give a few hundred bucks even. Â*
to test for a drain do this...take a test light or rig up like a 194 bulb,..disconnect the negative battery cable and connect the test light between the neg. cable and the neg. batt terminal, if the light illuminates, then you have a drain, if it is a drian, pull one fuse at a time until the test light goes out, when it does you have found the circuit that has the problem.
as for the plug on the back of the alt, if it is OEM plug, it is available at a place like pep boys, Â*if its an aftermarket one wire alt, it should be a plain crimp on connector you can get anywhere. Â*There are many small things that could cause an Alt not to charge correctly. Â*you may even want to look into the wires themselves, if they have been heated up over time due to corrosion or such they can cause problems. to test an alt out of a car and using a new battery to say its charging fine doesnt take into accout that wiring from alt to batt could be bad.
If you dont have a drain, try this... before you start the car check the voltage at the battery with a voltmeter... it should be around 12v-13v depending on age of battery and if you just shut the car off. Â*Now, start the car...and check the voltage at the battery again, from neg and pos terminals(not the clamp conenctors, touch the terminals on the battery themselves), Â*then keep the neg wire of the voltmeter on the neg battery terminal and touch the positive lead of the voltmeter to the pos. output of the alternator. Â*the reading across the battery and the reading from the alt should be the same, give or take .1 volts. That reading should be 13.5 -14.5 volts, if not, then there is a charging problem.
A rule of thumb i learned about charging systems is that in most cases, if an alt goes bad, the batt will soon follow, and if a batt goes bad, the alt will follow too. Â*if not changed right away one bad component will damage the other. Â*When ever i change an alt, i install a new battery. Â*when i fry(not just run down) a battery i tend to replace the alt as well. Â*
oh and one last thing the heater core in that TA was always a mess, a few years back we cleaned it out at my old shop and the gunk that came out of it was amazing. Â*We didnt think it would last tom as long as it did, it was on its way out for a while.
I can check out the batt alt issue if you want to stop by this weekend, im pretty sure i can trace it down in a short time.