primo232

Cleaned and waxed the Mustang yesterday so I took the wife and went for a drive. I drove about 15 miles and made my 1st stop for about an hour, no problems.I drove back towards home and stopped and parked in front of acarryout restaurant near the house.I was stopped about 10 minutes and I looked out at the car and white smoke was billowing out of the front of the hood. At firstI wasn't too worried because I thought it was just maybe a broken water hose. When I popped the hood I could see the smoke was coming from the altenator connector. It was so hot I couldn't pull out the connector. I went in the trunk for a rag and by the time I got back to the front of the car the damn thing had flamed up. I was able to blow down the flame and pull out the connector. No major damage andI drove it home. If this had happened at my first stop when the car was out of sight I might have lost it due to the fire. Has anyone had this happen to their car? I've come to the conclusion that a lot of persistant problems I've had are because of these damn underdrive pulleys so I'm getting rid of them before I change out the burned up parts. Anybody else out there feel like they have lost an alternator due to underdrive pulleys?

SoDakStang

IMO, u/d's are one of the worst things to put on your car. It slows the flow of your h2o pump for starters. I don't know if it speeds up the alt or not but first thing I woud check is to see if right off the alt, you have a short to ground. I don't really know why it started on fire, but if the connector was on fire, wouldn't hurt to look for rubbed wires. Just a thought

primo232

Yeah I'll check out the wiring because I need to replace the connector anyway. It melted some from the heat of the alternator.

FivePointOhh

have you changed any wire connections lately? ground wire? power wire? any wiring at all? poor grounding is a major cause of over heating and sometimes fire.

FivePointOhh

have you changed any wire connections lately? ground wire? power wire? any wiring at all? poor grounding is a major cause of over heating and sometimes fire.

PRO50SC

Iavoid the possibility of fire. it's a poor connection in the connector that causes it.f it's the factory alt, the connectors on those are notoriuos for burning up. Replacement alt's come w/ new connectors and say they must be changed to maintain warranty and reduce the risk of fire.

Hmmmm, I have no idea what happened to my post. There's about 2 lines missing from the beginning. Anyway, I think you got the picture.

mjr46

there is a TSBon the connectors for the alternator and when you purchase a new one.rebuilt it says for warrenty to remain in effect you must replace the factory one with the supplied onr that the alt comes with......Pro is right about the connectors being notoriuos for burning up...I replaced mine about 4 years ago when alt went bad and no probs since!

86GreenMachine

My alternator started on fire on me before and it was a old single wire that grounded outoff the silonode that caused it to burst into flames.

primo232

I have not changed any wiring. All the wires were insulated and otherwise looked fine. After I wrapped up the connector I cranked it up and drove it about 5 miles back home no problem. The alternator was in the car about 7 years.

Tony71502

I doubt pulleys are to blame. I have U/D on my car and although I did replace the alternator when I did the pulleys, I've had no problems at all with the charging. As for slowing down the water pump, yes, they do that.... but my car cools exactly as well as it used to.