OK this has been a pain in my butt for a couple weeks.

Car is very very hard to start. I at idle my car was only at about 12.2 volts and of course as i revved up the motor the car would charge better, but i cant stay at 3500 RPMs all the time.

Everyone here said oh its the crap alt, get the upgraded 94-95 one and that should solve everything. So i did. NOW at idle it puts down like 13.9 - 14.2 volts. If my black magic fan is on then it stays around 13.5 at idle.

The car is still very hard to start and i damn near have to get jumped off every time i drive it somewhere. I have an optima redtop battery that is barely a year old and they said at sears that it has a 3 year free replacement and 72 month prorated.

Do you all think this might be my problem, bc like i said NOW it will charge the hell out of the battery while the car is running, but if I turn the car off I have to jumpstart it with the toyota (at least its not a chevy).

Im thinking it has to be the battery bc with the new ALT throwing down amperage like that it SHOULD charge the batery while it runs NO?

Someone please correct me if i am wrong. Or throw some more ideas at me. i am fresh out.

 

Or youve got a dead short somplace and its draining the battery. Put the battery in another car and see if it still does it, then you'll know if its the battery or not.

 

well the only other car i have is the toyota and its not exactly got the compression ratio or the electronics that the stang has

MSD, cooling fan, etc etc

they have the battery up at autozone and they are charging it i am supposed to call em in about 20 minutes and find out if the batt is crap or not.

i HAD a short in the wiring going to my fan, so now i just have to turn the fan on manually now GRRR. I fixed that problem, cut the wires ran new wires to the fan and instead of just taking a change on the wires doing that again this time i used a 3/8 rubber hose i have laying around and ran the wires thru that (you cant see it im not that ghetto ) maybe that short screwed up the battery??? i dont know either way i wont mention it to sears if i ahve to take the battery back up there.

 

Battery cable could be bad I wouldreplace them and the termials aswel Is a good maintience also

 

Also, did you upgrade the charging wire when you changed alternators? Ive seen a 75Amp charging wire melted in half when a 130 was hooked up to it.

 

Yes I forgot about that when u get a HO alt from alterstart.com they give u a new charging wire a peice of 4 gauge works best

 

battery cable is nnew and 00 gauge the alt wire is 2 gauge

 

did you put a voltmeter to it when it was just sitting on a table to see what the battery put out....it seems to me that it would be pretty rare for an Optima to have a dead cell.

 

no but whenever i took it to autozone for them to test it, the machine said "charge and retest" let me call them now and see what the verdict is on the battery.

 

ok they said the battery is good. Just to eliminate any other possible problem, i am going to move my battery back to the front. Where should i put my MSD?? It was where my battery originally went. But since i am putting that back up front (which i should have done AGES ago) i dont know where to put the MSD now.