hi 2 things my battery light flickered the other day just as a long journey was ending stayed on for about 10 mins. looked at issue at home reved engine etc heard some sort of mechanical clatter (low noise) from where Alt lives been told by my local repairer Alterator has a clutch and replace will be £160 ish + fitting is this right about clutch in Alt will other deritives fit.

2/ Air con is now filling car with what I would call a rather none to pleasant pong any tips how to rid, ps still has orig pollon filter fitted.

The air con compressor certainly has a clutch. I've not heard of an alternator having one but I could be wrong. Didn't someone post about their aircon clutch falling to bits, or a pully wheel falling off, or something, a while back?

The alternator has a one way clutched pulley, when these seize up they become noisy so sounds about right to me.

You need the a/c system cleaned, the ultrasonic method is best IMHO usuaing a special machine that sits in the passenger footwell and kills the bacteria on the evaporator.

Hi threre

My car alternator went on friday. there was a very loud bang and then the power stearing and air con stopped working( according to my wife who was just going to pull off in it) our mechanic told us that the pully had sheared off of the alternator. He said that you can strip it down and put on a new pully, but as our warranty company were paying we may as well have whole new alternator.

We didn't have any advance warning like you have had it just went.

The alternator has a one way clutched pulley, when these seize up they become noisy so sounds about right to me.

You need the a/c system cleaned, the ultrasonic method is best IMHO usuaing a special machine that sits in the passenger footwell and kills the bacteria on the evaporator.

:iagree: - largely because bacteria haven't mananged to develop a resistance to ultrasound like they can to antiseptics and antibiotics.

I had the problem with the pong a little while ago in the air-con. I found that the oil breather was split/perished and was dripping on the exhaust branches, which is just below the fresh-air intake for the internal air system. New breather pipe should sorted this out. Good luck!

As for the alternator - I would ring up your local "Lucus / Bosch" dealer and get them to check it, rather than buying a new one. It means taking it off the car, but you will have to do this anyway if replacing it. They should charge you £10 to test it on a bench. I would say it is not a usual part to fail, look for the cheapest option first my dad always said.