OT: Somewhat unexpected...

[fedoragent]

Folks,

Somewhat scary and something I didn't expect. Out of curiosity, I decided to just touch the unattached battery cable to the car. I have a cutoff knob that I usually put in to connect the battery. I touched the cables and fastened them w/o the knob. From there I had power and I started up the car. It ran just fine and I figured it would cut out when I disconnected the battery cable. When the cable was disconnected...the car kept on running. I had figured that it would have just died. I figure it was running off of the alternator. Yet more newbie stuff I didn't know.

And yes, I have an alternator...

FG.

[Eneto-55]

An old way to test the alternator. If it dies, your alternator is not putting out enough to produce the spark. I've heard that it is bad business to do this with a modern car, however. Something about the electronic ignition, or the computer.

[Chester Brzostowski]

When I was a kid that is how we tested the charging system. If the car ran it was good. Today's single wire alternator systems don't like this type activity.

Chet…

[busycoupe]

Back when I was in college a friend of mine had a 66 Mustang that he ran for a couple of weeks with no battery at all, not even a dead one. He would jump start it off of his father's car in the morning and we would drive to school. Very few cars had locking hoods in those days so when it was time to go home we would push the Mustang close to the nearest car in the lot, pop the hood and get a jump start. I don't recommend the practice, but it worked for a couple of weeks.