Last Friday night Treese drove down to visit me and my parents in
Vallejo, but halfway down her battery light came on and a few minutes
later her car lost all power and completely shut down. She was able to
coast over onto the shoulder and while she was on the phone to our
insurance company trying to get a tow truck sent out a CHP officer saw
her and pulled over. This was a turn of good luck since he was able to
help relay precisely where they were, since they were in the middle of
nowhere not near any major city in the dark in the rain. He waited with
her until the tow truck showed up, and towed her to a motel in Williams.
A few weeks prior to this her battery light had come on so she took
it to O'Reilly and they said there was something wrong with her
alternator. We had purchased the alternator from AutoZone only a couple
years ago and it had a lifetime warranty so she took it in and they
tested both it and the battery and said there was nothing wrong and to
bring it back in the next time the battery light came on. Well, the next
time was when she was 100 miles from home coming to visit me.
The next morning I drove up to meet her along with my dad. We got
the tow truck to come out and the driver wanted to try jumping it first
to see what would happen. The car started up and idled for a bit, and
there was no strange sights or sounds from the alternator so he thought
it might be a bad battery. We drove it to a nearby. She drove it to a
nearby Napa Auto Parts while we followed behind. Once there, they tested
the alternator and battery, and both read as fine. After a minute
idling they re-tested the battery and it was significantly lower than
the first reading, which lead him to believe the battery was dead. We
also got that battery from AutoZone not too long ago so it was also
under warranty. We then drove to an AutoZone that was about 15 minutes
away.
Once we got to the AutoZone we explained the situation and the guy
came out to test the car. The battery read as pretty low, but other than
that they both read fine. After a minute he tested the alternator again
and this time it wasn't giving the numbers it should have been. He
determined that the alternator was definitely bad, but only
intermittently which is apparently very rare. So since we couldn't
simply exchange the alternator, we had to buy a new one and then we'd
get refunded once we turned in the old one. He called around trying to
find someone who could replace it for us but nobody was available. The
earliest we could get is a Tuesday appointment in Vallejo, not even in
the town we were in or any of the nearby towns. So we tried to make it
to Vallejo.
About 20 minutes in all the lights on her dash lit up again so we
pulled off on the next off-ramp and called for a tow truck. We had to
wait a couple hours since they had to get someone who could tow it 70-80
miles. It wasn't too bad, though, as the weather was nice. When the tow
truck showed up and hauled away the car we followed behind until it had
to get off and onto the truck scales. We had it towed to my
grandparents house since there wasn't a lot of room at my parents house.
Then on Tuesday morning we were able to drive it over to Pep Boys and
drop it off. When we picked it up later that afternoon they said they
also found a nail in one of the tires so patched that as well. Later in
the day we both headed back to Redding, with me following behind Treese
just in case she had to pull over again, but we made it home with no
problems. Let's hope this new alternator lasts longer than the last one.
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