Hi Tonya,
     
     I have a few suggestions, but please take with a grain of salt.
     
     I haven't had to find my starter, yet, but if you need I can look it 
     up in Bently and fax you a photocopy of the pages.
     
     Diagnosing voltage problems:  Do you have a good multi-meter?  Do you 
     know how to measure current with one?
     
     Here's what you can try:
     
     First, check your ground strap connection at the transmission, not the 
     ground post on your battery.  Remove, clean and reconnect.
     
     Now, if you disconnect the ground post of the battery and place your 
     meter in series with the ground post and your ground cable, you can 
     measure the current drawn from the battery.  Careful to get the 
     polarity right.  You may have  short somewhre in your system.  I am 
     sure there is a procedure in the archives and I believe in the Bentley 
     as well that illustrates how to find it.  Basically it's kind of like 
     this, but please search for a more definitive procedure.  With the 
     ignition on (engine not running) and ALL possible things turned off 
     (radio, etc) there should be no current measured.  If there is, there 
     is a procedure of pulling fuses until the current goes away and you 
     have isolated the circuit witht the fault.  It will narrow down the 
     choices.  See bentley/archives.
     
     There is also another thing to think about.  As wires age, their 
     resistance goes up and there are greater power losses due to this 
     resistance.  So you can get a voltage drop just because of the length 
     of wire current has to travel from the battery back to the engine 
     compartment.  Two volts seems excessive, but I guess it may be 
     possible.  There are also many threads about the marginal current 
     carrying capacity of the wiring from the battery back to the engine.  
     Search the archives for articles explaining replacing/upgrading the 
     wiring.  A lot of the threads have to do with adding the secondary 
     battery with a voltage isolator, so you may want to add that to your 
     search criteria.  I can dig the info up if you are having trouble 
     finding it.
     
     Hope this helps, and let me know if I can do more.........

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: stupid, ignorant question
Author:  vanagon@lenti.med.umn.edu at SMTPGATE
Date:    2/22/97 3:45 PM

Yes I'm ignorant (at least about this ...)
     
Where is the starter on an 87 vanagon?  It finally warmed up enough, and 
wasn't raining, to where I could try to get my alternator working. 
Connections at the alternator are okay (cleaned them all up anyway), but 
someone told me that the connections at the starter may be causing the 
trouble.  So where IS the starter?  And what does it look like?
     
Also, on a weird note, the battery has 11 volts across it when NOT 
connected to the engine.  When I connect the ground strap, it has 9 volts 
across the terminals.  Back at the alternator (with the key in the on 
position, engine off), it reads 7 volts.  This doesn't seem right. Any 
ideas?
     
Brushers on alternator looked okay at quick glance, but wanted to check 
all the connections before I passed judgement.  I've got the battery out 
of the van currently and hooked to a charger.
     
TIA everyone!
Tonya