After about 10 mins of driving yesterday my battery light came on. As soon as that happened i raced home so i wouldnt get stranded. Well i check the voltage of the battery and it came out at 12.3 with the car off. With it on i got 14.2-3. Should i check the voltage agian when the light comes back on? Im assuming the alt. is going bad after it gets warmed up. What is the price of a new one at the dealer? or should i just get one from the local autoparts store?
Trout
Why don’t you try calling them.
Belt could be slipping i wouldn’t assume anything alt is expensive and a pain in the azz to fix…
yeah its the alternator, see if you can get a refurbished one with some kind of warranty on it from a good parts store.
I’ll save us some bandwidth
My battery light keeps coming on by itself as well. It’ll flicker on, stay on for a while, then sometimes go right out. Then it doesn’t come on at all. Then yesterday it comes on again, Check Engine light comes on, and the car slowly loses power.
I checked the alternator belt–no probs. I took off the negative battery cable–car kept running fine. Tested the battery–plenty of juice.
My local mechanic suggested that I need to replace my neg/positive battery cables, as they were somewhat loose. We tightened them, and the battery light still came on.
Is replacing the cables the answer?
I had this happen to me, it’s probably the alternator, messing up, just hit it with a wrench and it will work again, lol.
The symptoms you all are describing are the same as what happened to me when the alternator started to die. First the battery light would flicker on and then would go off. It started to do this more consistently. Then the light would always be on below a certain RPM. As time went on that RPM grew higher and higher. I replaced the alternator and the problem was solved. Hope this helps and good luck replacing the alternator, it’s a bitch to get at!
-Brent
Yo it might not be the altenator i just changed mine yesterday n its still doing it
do you have a system in the car?
if you do invest in a capacitor
Damn dudes this thread was like 4 months ago since then i have sold my car and bought an RSX… Anyways I bought a remanufactured alt. with lifetime warrenty. Installed it and everything was fine. Yes i did have a pretty hefty system in the car (around 700wrms) including a 1Farad cap. If your still having probs after the alt. install check your battery, ground connections,(on the tranny bracket and frame) and belt slack.
Yeah, I think I’ll do just that. I can get a remanufactured alternator for like $50 from my mechanic. Strangely enough, the alternator/batter light would flicker whether I had my stereo (which is kinda powerful) on or off. I stopped listening to music and it still comes on by itself. Thanks for the help, guys. Any other thoughts or experiences would be appreciated.
check out my thread “battery light flickering on” sounds exactly like a bunch of peoples problems. Got mine fixed.