Good Afternoon,

 

I have just been driving down the motorway and out of nowhere the speedo needle starts dropping even though my foot is on the peddle.

 

Pull onto hard shoulder and car still running but nothing moving, no warning lights on dash, no oil anywhere.

 

Turn car off, back on and try to move and car wont start.

 

Try to start again and clock resets to 0.00 and car wont even tick over. dead.

 

Gets towed to my garage, electrical smell, puts battery to charge and tries to start, doesnt start, but trys to tick over since recharging a little.

 

I then left at this point as mechanic continued looking.

 

Any thoughts on the potential issue?

 

 

Alternator/battery/broken alternator wire or poor earth

Thank you.

 

Do you believe any of the things you listed would cause the power loss (not accelerating), while driving that I experienced?

Yes battery dying will cause that but fault could be with alternator or earth

Check your fuses, maxi's, normals and the fiddly little buggers.

 

Make sure all the terminals are on right on the high current cables, have clean connections and no damage along the cable.

 

Make sure your alternator belt hasn't run away.

 

Make sure the alternator belt pulley hasn't failed (they have a clutch in).

 

Charge the battery and do a load test.

 

Run the car and see what sort of voltage the alternator's putting back into the battery.

 

I'm trying to remember if there's a charge sensing circuit on these....?

 

But yeah, sounds like your car ran out of electricity.

I had to change the alternator pulley recently (4 weeks ago) as original one was making a racket

Don't trust new parts to be OK, stuff just isn't built like that any more. I had a 6 month old driveshaft check out earlier this year and spent ages trying everything because I assumed there was no way a 6 month old part would fail.