Oil On The Alternator...Not Good!!!

[positron1]

My car finally dies early this morning about 3AM as I'm about to make a burger run to Hardees so I get up about 10 and take the alternator and the battery to AutoZone to get them tested. The battery gets charged up and comes up good and so does the alternator but it's caked with oil, some of it from previous owner neglect and some from a couple of weeks ago when I busted the oil pan gasket and oil spewed on my steering rack and the bottom of the block. They told me that oil will kill electrical components if it gets in them which makes sense but I never really had an incident to think about that. Is this true? I went ahead and bought a new alternator because the old one was gummed up and the pulley was making a clicking noise so I figured that it was on it's way out anyhow. I bolted up the new one and put the battery back in place and it fired up pretty good but the true test will be tonight when I go to work and check for headlight flaring and voltage spikes when I hit the climate control or power windows. It's been doing that for a couple of weeks now and slow starting for about a week so like I said, I expected this to happen. But can anyone answer the question about the oil on electrical parts?

[positron1]

Drove the car at night and the new alternator cleared up a couple of problems. The car's headlights use to flicker whenever I stopped at a stoplight. The dashlights would flicker and the idle would drop whenever I turned on the climate control or used the power windows/moonroof. These problems seem to be elimanated and the power band seems smoother as I accelerate. Also, the idle is much more stable.

[bcar240]

Most electrical parts in places like that (engine bay, etc) are pretty well protected against environmental stuff like water/oil. Still it is not a good thing to get oil all inside the alternator due to spinning parts and the like. I am not sure how electrically conductive oil is, but I doubt it would be as much of a problem to exposed electrics as water would be.

edit: don't get me wrong though, if you can avoid getting oil all over important electrical parts, by all means do it, it's not helping anything. Used oil becomes acidic too, which I guess could cause some corrosion.
Modified by bcar240 at 9:17 PM 12/28/2006