Help! It's dead!
 

Well, my alternator bearings went out the other day ('96 S-10 4x4), so I took it up to the local auto-electric shop to get it repaired. I re-installed it last night and cleaned up the battery terminals. The positive side-post connector was totally blue-green with corrosion, and the battery terminal had yellow powder in the screw socket (guess that explains my weak sounding starter...).

Anyway, I hooked everything back up, went to start up. No dome light, no radio, no beep when I insert the key. Totally dead. In fact, now that I think about it, there was no "click" and spark when I connected the battery.

I measure 12.6v at the battery terminals, the post on the back of the alternator, and on the little connector that goes in to the wiring harness on the passenger side. It was too dark to try to test at the starter. If the main lead to the starter was bad, would that cause the entire system, lights and all to go down?

Re: Help! It's dead!
 

There is a wire that runs from the battery + terminal down to a junction block underneath of the battery, I believe if that goes bad you lose power to the PCM and everything.

I would bet money that your cables look like mine did on my 2000 Blazer, A little bit of corrosion at the terminals and corrosion all of the way down the wire under the insulation. Take a good look at them.

I converted all of mine over to top post(hate side post bs) with 0 gauge ground wires and from back of alternator to battery then 4 gauge from the battery to the junction box deal underneath. I still need to replace my starter wire.

Re: Help! It's dead!
 

Well, I only saw the thee wires, and none of them appear to go under the battery, but I'll check it, as well as the connections, when I get home.

Re: Help! It's dead!
 

96 may not have the one going underneath of the battery, mines a 2000

Re: Help! It's dead!
 

Ok. I may have found my problem. While looking everything over again, I found two leads with ring terminals on them in the vicinity of the post on the alternator. I don't remember taking off more than one, but looking at the sketchy wiring diagram in the Haynes book, it looks like there may have been more than one wire going to the post.

Can somebody confirm how many wires go to the post on the back of the alternator?

Re: Help! It's dead!
 

Yep, that was it. In the better light today, I saw that both wires were fusible links. Therefore they probably connect to the alternator output. Works now!

So, for the record, there are 3 wires going to the stud on the alternator.