The Unofficial "Ask a Stupid Question" Thread

[Grog6]

Here is a strange one...
What would cause the alternator to get hot when the car is off?

Yesterday the alternator went to shit in my Cougar. It started having voltage spikes anytime above 4000RPM or so. Parked the car for the night and the next morning the battery was completely dead. Put it on a 20 amp charge and the battery came back after a few hours, but the alternator was burning up; too hot to touch.

Guessing it has some sort of short in it. It has given a few random voltage spikes last few months so I'm not surprised.

I'd like to just replace the voltage regulator and see if that's the issue, but at this point I don't trust the rest of it...

That is a bad diode bridge, it's at one end of the outer windings, and is a three -phase rectifier. shorting the battery can cause it. You'll need a new alt, or that one rebuilt, it's not a diy job. Regulator is probably bad too.

 

[XR7-4.6]

Ahhh. Now I understand the relays in the other thread.

But does that  really make an appreciable difference? I'll have to look at the wiring diagrams to see the entire path...

Yes. It’s not the difference between halogen and projectors but when you compare the differences between a given bulb type (say silverstar ultra 9007, vs standard no name 9007) the relays absolutely will make a bigger difference. The routing and gauge is inadequate from the factory for the bulbs true potential.

I use relays in mine not even for that fact, only because it’s easier to adapt for a combined bulb 9007 as factory to separated 9005/9006 conversion.

 

[Grog6]

A cold bulb filament is about 4 ohms; I'd bet none of you guys would use 18 gauge wire for speaker wire for a stereo install. I'm running 12 gauge on the speakers, and 10 gauge to the sub. The bulb filamentresistance gets higher at temperature,but it gets hotter faster with relays, so it will be brighter, and last longer.

 

[Stanley]

Quick sanity check on a rear suspension build. I already made a thread for this a while back, but it's time to order and I'd appreciate some eyes on what I'm about to commit to. Going to swap in Mark VIII arms:

Knuckle Bushings (Energy Suspension 4.3163G) x 6 (comes as a set)
Upper Control Arm Bushings x 2
Lower Control Arm Bushings x 4 (Delrin; for Mark VIII-armed cars)
Toe Compensators x 2
Poly Shock Mount Kit (SCP)
Addco 1 1/8" Anti-Sway Bar

The Addco kit comes with its own bushings. Already have the coil spring isolator pads. Subframe I'm skipping for now. Going to do the differential carrier bushings when I do the differential itself.

So, anything I'm missing/doing wrong at the back?

 

[White Lincoln]

95-97. The 98+ grand marquis housings don’t fit cougars and they went back to the 9007 bulb

These are what 95-97 grand marquis housings look like in a cougar

View attachment 12607

Thank you XR7. Now I know what to look for.
PS: I really like the color of your car.

 

[KevinVarnes]

Quick sanity check on a rear suspension build. I already made a thread for this a while back, but it's time to order and I'd appreciate some eyes on what I'm about to commit to. Going to swap in Mark VIII arms:

Knuckle Bushings (Energy Suspension 4.3163G) x 6 (comes as a set)
Upper Control Arm Bushings x 2
Lower Control Arm Bushings x 4 (Delrin; for Mark VIII-armed cars)
Toe Compensators x 2
Poly Shock Mount Kit (SCP)
Addco 1 1/8" Anti-Sway Bar

The Addco kit comes with its own bushings. Already have the coil spring isolator pads. Subframe I'm skipping for now. Going to do the differential carrier bushings when I do the differential itself.

So, anything I'm missing/doing wrong at the back?

Do you have good sway bar end links? Other than that I think you should be in good shape.

 

[White Lincoln]

Limitations in the housing design limit the options that don't involve blinding oncoming traffic, which is a nonnegotiable requirement IMO for any upgrades. Don't just buy LED bulbs and drop them into the factory housing - your light on the road will go up, sure, but the beam pattern will be ruined and the amount of light that scatters to blind oncoming traffic will shoot through the roof too.

The 96+ housings are clear which allow for small projectors that use HIDs and/or LEDs to be used safely. With the 95 and older housings the refracting lenses make any kind of cutoff from the beam difficult to predict; I've never seen it done. One option for Cougar guys is to use GM headlights...

If you go the Grand Marquis headlight route you can use HIR 9011/9012 bulbs in them which are substantially brighter than the stock 9007s and the 9005/9006 bulbs the grand marquis housings use. The other thing is making an efficient electrical path, the stock wiring is subpar, you can improve bulb output simply by running the bulbs straight off the battery using relays for high and low beams with a custom harness.

Brighter isn’t necessarily better and whiter(and especially blue) isn’t actually necessarily more visible.

Before I go and spend money and NOT get what I needed, this is what I understand would help improve my headlight brightness on my 94 Cougar:
1) Purchase left / right headlamp assemblies for a 95-97 Grand Marquis.
2) Purchase 2 HIR 9011 or 9012 headlight bulbs.
3) Purchase heavier wiring for the new lamps to replace the old wiring from lamp to relay / relay to battery.
4) New relay's would probably be in order as mentioned in another thread on this site.

The hardest part to all of this would be the re-wiring of the head lamps.

 

[CDsDontBurn]

Quick sanity check on a rear suspension build. I already made a thread for this a while back, but it's time to order and I'd appreciate some eyes on what I'm about to commit to. Going to swap in Mark VIII arms:

Knuckle Bushings (Energy Suspension 4.3163G) x 6 (comes as a set)
Upper Control Arm Bushings x 2
Lower Control Arm Bushings x 4 (Delrin; for Mark VIII-armed cars)
Toe Compensators x 2
Poly Shock Mount Kit (SCP)
Addco 1 1/8" Anti-Sway Bar

The Addco kit comes with its own bushings. Already have the coil spring isolator pads. Subframe I'm skipping for now. Going to do the differential carrier bushings when I do the differential itself.

So, anything I'm missing/doing wrong at the back?

Check out my build thread (see sig) and check the Excel sheet I linked.

It should have everything in there for just about everything.

 

[Zep5.0]

Check out my build thread (see sig) and check the Excel sheet I linked.

It should have everything in there for just about everything.

Forgot about the Excel sheet. Dang, we spent hours going over this at TSTSNBN, and it was super useful to me.

FWIW - I stopped updating mine when the costs scared me