battery drain car running

[Stone]

I thought for sure my alternator was bad. With a fully charged battery the car runs for around 45 min then it just starts bogging and soon cuts off. When I try to start, nothing just clicking. So I charged the battery, started the car and removed the battery cable, the car shut down immediately. So I was like cool must be the alternator, but when I tested it at the parts store it passed twice? Any advice on whbere to go nexy would be VERY appreciated.


thanks

Stone

 

[Twistin6]

How about a dead cell in tha battery causing it not to hold charge? You can have it tested at any Walmart service center, and they supply a printout of the results.

 

[whitehot84]

I thought for sure my alternator was bad. With a fully charged battery the car runs for around 45 min then it just starts bogging and soon cuts off. When I try to start, nothing just clicking. So I charged the battery, started the car and removed the battery cable, the car shut down immediately. So I was like cool must be the alternator, but when I tested it at the parts store it passed twice? Any advice on whbere to go nexy would be VERY appreciated.


thanks

Stone

With your battery charged turn on the ignition key and see if the volt light on the left side of the dash comes on. If it doesn't you must replace the bulb. This is in the charging circuit and must light to trigger the alternator.

 

[Stone]

With your battery charged turn on the ignition key and see if the volt light on the left side of the dash comes on. If it doesn't you must replace the bulb. This is in the charging circuit and must light to trigger the alternator.

Holy cow! Im allmost sure the light dosnt come on, because my brother inlaw asked me yester day what the volt meter said and I looked and said I dont have one. He was like WTF. I will replace the bulb and rertry tomorrow
thanks

stone

 

[charlief1]

Just don't take the battery cable off while the engine is running. You can spike the puter as well as the alternator. Not a good thing to do.

 

[novaderrik]

With your battery charged turn on the ignition key and see if the volt light on the left side of the dash comes on. If it doesn't you must replace the bulb. This is in the charging circuit and must light to trigger the alternator.

it might not be the bulb- my car did the same thing one night coming home from work. it literally ran out of power as i was pulling into my driveway. voltmeter read 9 volts, which is where the ecm gives up and just shuts down.
after upgrading to a CS120 alternator that i had sitting on the shelf it still didn't charge. i noticed that the 'volt' light didn't work, so i replaced the bulb. still nothing. then i bumped the cluster with the key on, and the volt light came on. hooked up my volt meter to the battery and started it up. voltage was 11.5 and dropping. then i pushed in on the cluster, and the volts went up to 14.5 and held steady.
my permanent fix was to pull the cluster out and clean all the contacts where the harness plugs into the back of it with a soft pencil eraser. i gently bent all the tabs up a little bit with a small screwdriver, just to make sure they got good contact.
6 years later and it still works perfectly.

 

[whitehot1]

it might not be the bulb- my car did the same thing one night coming home from work. it literally ran out of power as i was pulling into my driveway. voltmeter read 9 volts, which is where the ecm gives up and just shuts down.
after upgrading to a CS120 alternator that i had sitting on the shelf it still didn't charge. i noticed that the 'volt' light didn't work, so i replaced the bulb. still nothing. then i bumped the cluster with the key on, and the volt light came on. hooked up my volt meter to the battery and started it up. voltage was 11.5 and dropping. then i pushed in on the cluster, and the volts went up to 14.5 and held steady.
my permanent fix was to pull the cluster out and clean all the contacts where the harness plugs into the back of it with a soft pencil eraser. i gently bent all the tabs up a little bit with a small screwdriver, just to make sure they got good contact.
6 years later and it still works perfectly.

This brought back one very old bad memory i had with an 86 T-Type that i owned in 1996.

The same exact thing happened to me with the cluster losing contact and stopping the battery from charging except i was on the highway at night when everything went dead.

Not a good experience at all, but only happened once.

Took a little while to figure that problem out since it wasn't that apparent when looking for a broken contact in the charging system.

 

[paulg]

Been through this as well and when it happened i as told about a plug and play circuit bypass that caspers has that provides uninterupted charge to the bat and illiminates this problem..its around $40 or so.. luckily when it happened to me i just tapped on the volts light and it came back on and hasnt lost contact since.. try that with the key on engine off see if it gets contact and comes on..

 

[SloGN]

one thing you can do is take a 194 bulb and socket and attach one end to the small wire on the alt and then attached the other end to the large wire and that will do the same thing as the bulb in the dash. You can make that for was less than 40 bucks. you can even take it one step further and go to a junk yard and get the small wire and plug from a park avenue/lesabre and not cut/splice any thing. i have one made up for testing alts on the car to rule out any wiring issues in dash.


Also check the gauges fuse in the fuse box. if that fuse is bad the volt light will not work!

been there done that over a bad fuse !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Turbowife]

If that all test well...make sure the large cable going to the battery isn't damaged anywhere.

I rebuilt an alternator and then went back and gave the shop a cussing over that once....

Just my 2.