Tymo23

Earlier I was driving up hill on a hwy and my 88' LX civic made a grinding rattly noise, then my battery light came on my dash. I've been doing a bit of research and from the sounds and resulting light it seems like it is the alternator. However when I looked under the hood I pulled a snapped belt out but I don't know if that's newly broken or the mechanic forgot to pull it out based on some of the wear marks on the belt. How many belts should my 88' LX civic have?

I'm sorry I don't know much, but I'm trying to get into fixing things myself when I can.

MelJ

Depending on whether or not your car has A/C, it'll be 2 or 3 belts. If the belt was snapped, chances are it just went. Did your mechanic recently do a belt job to your car? He could have overtightened the belt(s) and overstressed them.

Tymo23

I bought my car 3 years ago from a friend, and my A/C has never worked. Also a bit of an update, I just drove it to the store quickly, and my electronics were losing power slowly. My headlights are very dim and my windows crawl very slowly. Does this mean it's the Alternator? And I found the old worn belt by chance today just while looking, and the belt has nothing to do with the noise I heard?

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

battery light usually means bad alternator. you can drive for a short while on the battery, but eventually it will die and car wont work. try and charge the battery if you plan to drive it again without alternator.

Too Tall

Look at the alternator pulley and see if there is a belt on it. If the belt is missing, try to turn the alternator by hand, engine off. If the belt jumped off the alternator, the alternator may still be good. The belt may have jumped of because of bad pulley alignment. If you cannot spin the alternator pulley by hand, engine off, the bearings in the alternator are frozen, which could also have caused the belt to break.

Be careful, without the alternator charging the battery, your engine will quit running when the battery goes dead. You seem to be very close to that point now.