This article by far is the best info on this subject. Thanks for the great advice.

The ohm reading recommended here (6 - 11 ohms) conflicts with the recommendation of the other eHow article, which recommends 10,000 to 50,000 ohms. Which is right?

Wonderful and detailed article on painting wood paneling.

Great self employment article. You pointed out some very useful actions that one should take.

My uncle gave me his old car, and it has been sitting under a tree for a couple of years, so there is tree sap and pods all over, what would you suggest I do to remove it?

@hurtsdonut: That is assuming you want an ideal conductor. In the case of spark plugs, you actually want a good deal of resistance to protect the coil and ignition system. When the spark is created, it breaks down the insulation of air, the gap ends up as low voltage with high current -> aka: much lower resistance. If the wires were not resistive, you would have a full short circuit and really hurt the system. This way, the voltage goes across the wire as the spark occurs, so that the coil isn't shorted.

"If you are testing with the engine off, you are not directly testing the alternator at all -- you are just reading the battery's voltage." Yes, so if you get the about the same voltage with the engine off as you do on, the alternator is doing it's job. If the alt is failing, your voltage will be lower once you start the engine as it's draining the battery. The charge of the battery could already be low if the engine has been run with a bad alternator for some time, so the author here is using the engine-off reading as a baseline.

as the above states, testing the alternator alone doesn't necessarily give you a full picture of the alternator/battery duet. a good way to go about this is to test the voltage at the BATTERY, not the alternator. this is SIMPLE and will make you feel like a pro even if you've never done anything under the hood before: ***car batteries contain very dangerous chemicals - always wear proper eye/skin protection when dealing with them and NO SMOKING!!*** ok, start with the engine OFF and test the voltage of the battery (red meter probe to the positive battery node, black meter probe to the negative battery node) Doing this tests to make sure your battery is holding a charge even when voltage is not being supplied by the alternator. the average battery should read in at about 12 volts. a little higher's ok... but if you're down below 10, that's trouble and may mean your battery's no...

LOL! Low resistance? The optimal resistance of any conductor is 0 ohms. You can't short a wire from one end to the other, only through the insulation to another conductor. The last sentence in Step 4 is completely incorrect and should be removed.

Great article, I am having problems with Squirrels and birds. Now the birds have baby's and they are knocking on my walls and running through the attic. I will give this a try! Thank You!!!