funny sudden-dying-no-starting-then-starting-later problem with Classic

[David Pertuz]

First of all, I know I can find information to me useful in the archives.
I'll be looking through them this evening, but since she told me about the
problem I haven't had any time until now to look at them.

My GF's car - '91 Classic, 112k miles, stock - died on her yesterday. She
had just turned onto our block when the car died suddenly. Tried to restart
it and got only the ckicking from the starter solenoid. The battery light
had been on for a while (possibly it had been on for at least the last day
or two) and just before the car died the radio went off.

All of the above sound like pretty straightforward dead-alternator
symptoms, BUT......yesterday evening when I got home and went out to the
car, it.....fired right up on the first try. Huh? She  went out in it today
and, once again, the car suddenly died in traffic. We went out to it about
30 minutes ago and, again, it fired right up, then died again when we got
to our street.

If it were not for the fact that it eventually restarts normally, I would
just do diagnostics to check/confirm a bad alternator. But a dead
alternator that drained the battery wouldn't let the car fire up again.

Can any of you shed some light on this for me? She own't be able to drive
it to work tomorrow but I'd like to have it running normally again by Monday.

thanks,
david