SuicideBeta

Hello everyone.. kinda new to these forums but i'm hoping i could find some help with my 96 GT.

The problem started about 10 days ago. I was coming home from work and noticed my sound system(pioneer deh-p3000ib) was cutting in and out. i thought the CD was scratched so turned the radio off. Later on that day i left to go to walmart when half way there i noticed all the lights in the dash growing dimmer. At that point i was thinking i should turn around and go home. Half a mile from my house the car ended up slowly dying.. until it shut off. me and some friends pushed the car home. i then bought a new battery just incase. Poped it in and the car ran fine. Next day i went to work like normal. After work went to some friends house.. then dropped another friend off, and again on the way home i saw the voltage was slowly dropping until the car died again. Since this was the new battery i was guessing the battery wasn't the problem.

I figured crap.. my alternator must have died. I wanted to be on the safe side so i got it tested anyway. It tested fine. A friend told me that the Autozone tests are horrible so i went with getting a new alternator. next day popped it in and the car was running fine at about 14 volts. Drove it around for like an hour. looks like it was fine dropped to a little below the half way mark on the battery, figured it was still normal. That night left to go to the movies.. and guess what... it had dropped back down to around 12 volts. I'm guessing it was twelve because it was around the O in NORMAL on the in dash volt gauge xD. well friends said the would come give me a jump if it died so i went anyway. On the way home i noticed it droped to below the N in normal. i sat with it for about 20 mins till it again died.

well i decided to take the new battery back and get my old one replaced since i still had the core and it was under warranty. i then got the new alternator replaced because i figured i got a defective one. popped that one in and it was still not at 14 volts. left it alone for a couple days.

we checked all the fuses. Only the airbag fuse was blown but the airbag light has been on for almost a year. I installed a new amp 5 days prior to the problem, and disconnected it when i had suspision.

8 days later we decide to check out what going on soo we start the car on the drained battery and it was enough to turn over the car. Suprisingly it was running on 14 volts again. The hood was up and i noticed an electrical burning smell with mild amounts of smoke. Looked like i might be coming from the alternator but was unsure. drove it around and all was good. went to autozone and came back and all was still good. xD

later that day we wen't to McDonalds and the car was back to around 12 volts with a slow drain... left it alone for like 6 hours to see if it would magically work again.. No luck

So...

2 alternators and 2 batteries later i have bo idea whats going on.

im going to check it tomorrow to see if it turns on cold and maintains a 14v charge. I thought that it was odd that everytime the car wasnt charging it was warm so im gonna look into my suspicions.

I've checked this forum and other forums for anything that will help me to no avail.

If anyone has had a similar problem or the same, or has any ideas as to what i should do. I would love some help.

Frostbitten

basically the whole charging system for the car is the alternator. if your wiring from the battery to the alternator is good then you must have something else draining it. its rare, but in some cases a bad starter can cause battery drain, epecially since its tied in with the the same wire coming from the battery into the fuse box. If you have any aftermarket wiring in the car for the stereo or whatever, go through and make sure all connections are tight and there isnt any bare wire showing. I used to have an amp in my car and had the exact same problems. turned out I had some bare power wire showing on my connection to the amp and it kept leaking voltage.

SuicideBeta

Thank you for the advice. This coming sunday i'll check the wiring. As for the starter thats something to look into. Im not sure where its located but i can find out real quick. Here in miami it floods from time to time. i avoid any puddle that as high as the stock CIA but im not sure if it can damage any other component. I will be looking into this and give an update soon. Thanks again.

SuicideBeta

Does anyone know where i can find a wiring diagram for the cars charging system?

SuicideBeta

Well the problem is fixed, sorry for the late post. ummm... im gonna try to describe what was wrong as well as i can.(im no mechanic xD)

Simple as i can put it

The voltage guage in the dash also serves as a relay to tell the voltage regulator, inside the alternator, what to charge.

there was some kind of loose connection behind the instrument cluster.
i think the mechanic called it a piggy back or something...

anyways because it was loose the relay couldnt tell the alternator what to charge.

well anyways they just cleaned the connector and reconnected it and voila system was reading 14 volts again xD.

hope this helps anyone who was just as stumped as me

JC316

Wow, that is a new one to me. Never heard of that, but I will definitely keep it in mind. I accidentally left the voltage regulator unplugged once and it did that to me.

devongarver

wow, news to me as well! glad you got it going!