JWH64

I am a newbie to the site and hope you can shed a little light on a recent issue. Thanks in advance. My wife has an 07 GX470. Two days ago she came home and mentioned there was a whirring noise from the engine. I started the car, lifted the hood and heard the noise. Sounded like it was being generated by the serpantine belt. Meaning, something that the belt was "driving" was making the noise. She drove it again yesterday morning for a 10 mile trip to drop off son at camp. When she came back, she indicated that it smelled????!! Just walking out the door to the garage I was hit in the face by a very strong electrical smell. No fire, but smelled very bad. Car has been sitting since yesterday morning and she just now tried to start it and the car is dead....no power to anything. Battery is new 3 months ago. What the heck could that be. I am at work so I cannot check any fuses, but I have no clue. Must get it towed now, but shifter will not move out of park so it is stuck in garage. How can I get this thing in neutral????

Booyah

Its your Altenator thats gone bead---Mine did the EXACT SAME thing just the other week. Whirring noise and electical smell along with the Batt light on.. I had lexus do it, new Alt and battery $750

Mine is an 08 with only 44K

JWH64

Good to know. Hoping that the car had not fried something major, but I assume the blowing of a fuse would have prevented that. Forgot to mention that car has 55k miles. Thank you.

Booyah

Yea kinda soon I think but things happen lol.......the Alt just burned up windings in it thats the smell you are smelling. I was going to do it myself but its buried way underneath the motor under the powersteering pump--no time or way to mess with that.

NR04

My alternator went bad around 60K miles. It's a 2006 model. I had the same symptom before it crapped out. Luckily I was able to drive home with just the power from the battery.

You probably don't need a new battery since it's only 3-months old. The dealer will sell you a reman unit. They don't sell new ones.

I got a Denso replacement unit from RockAuto and spent about 2.5 hours to replace it. It's not too bad of a job, just takes some time to remove the parts surrounding the alternator.

If you like to work on cars, I can give more detailed instructions.