You are very lucky you didn't have a fire! Those door panels are very flammable. Any time you see an unexplained twitch on the ammeter (it isn't a "voltmeter", it is an ammeter - it reads the amperes flowing into something in the car), you should IMMEDIATELY disconnect the battery before you lose the whole darn car, GM alternator and all! Dick Benjamin ----- Original Message ----- From: <Imperial59crown@xxxxxxx> To: <mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 7:57 PM Subject: IML: No juice in my '59 > The last few times I went to start my '59 Imperial it didn't have enough > juice to crank it over, so I had to jump start it with my other car. Today it > was completely dead, and I had to leave the jumper cables on about ten > minutes till it finally got enough juice to start the engine. I then took it > over to Sears and had the battery tested, which was fine, and he tightened up > the belt on my unmentionable thingamajig. He felt I may have a problem with > the unmentionable part, so I took it over to my regular mechanic, who found > the whole charging system to be working just fine. After turning the car off > while still hooked up to the tester you could see an intermittent 20 amp > surge, which he thought was my problem. I told him I suspected the rear > passenger side window, since at times I could hear a clicking sound from > there, and see the voltmeter jump. We then removed the door panel, which > takes about three seconds in my car since it is practically falling off. The > master window switch was very hot on the prongs that went to the rear window, > and what we discovered, is since I do not have the bezel in place around the > window switches, they had sunken back into the door, and the rear switch > being in the first position was slightly wedged under the door panel. Once > the panel was off there was no problem. Who would have thought such a dumb > little thing could cause such problems! > Bill '59 Crown >