Exhausting, Yet Electrifying...

I picked the car up yesterday from the muffler shop. He did a great job getting the Magnaflow exhaust to fit. The fuel tank required some persuasion to get the tailpipe around it safely, which I was expecting to some extent. Sounds good too, much quieter but still a good rumble when I get on it.

I almost forgot: we start the car and after 5 seconds it starts to smoke, and I mean smoke out of the exhaust. We wait ten minutes and it's still smoking, maybe worse. I decide to pay and leave after we figure the pipes have some oil or grease in them from manufacturing and assembly and it should burn off. Maybe a quarter mile from the shop with a huge plume of smoke from the car, I get on it and see an object shoot out one of the tailpipes and roll along the highway with blue smoke all over it. I think a shop rag or something ended up in the pipes and burnt up before getting ejected out the back. Problem solved, and in spectacular fashion no less! No more smoke.

With the fresh battery in the car, I swung by Advanced Auto Parts and they tested the alternator on the car, just to see if I had figured out the electrical gremlin from the other day. Wasn't putting out enough voltage and actually dropped when I revved the engine. Hmm. I bought a new regulator for $15 (to replace the other new one) and swapped it on. Brought the car back to them, after the swap and after trickle charging the battery, to check the alternator. The battery has 12.5v at standstill with car off vs. 11.5v yesterday. With car running at idle the volts were still 12.5 vs. 11.5 yesterday. I decided to rev the engine to 2000rpm and sure enough the volts went past 14, unlike yesterday when they dropped with higher rpms. So partly, I had a bad regulator.

But also it appears that the March underdrive pullies don't charge the battery suffieciently at idle. Not sure what to do here yet. But definitely keeping the jumper cables in the trunk!