Sorry for the long post Skip down to "COMPELETELY" to get the bare facts.

I have a 1988 LX that ive had for about 2 weeks. Never had a starting or charging problem, voltage always read normal until i tried to go to work today. It was almost completely dead, the fuel pump barely had enough juice to prime. So i got a jump because i was in a hurry. Drove to work (15 min) then let it idle in the parking lot for anoter 8 min or so for good measure. everything was workin fine, guage said volts were normal. so i shut it off, let it sit for about an hour then came back to see if it would start. COMPLETELY dead. The battery is 2 weeks old, alternator is about 2 1/2-3 months old. I got a juimp and did a little trouble shooting. The wires from the rectifier plug look original and slightly frayed, but there is no exposed wire, volt regulator plug looks fine, but if i sit in the car and watch the guage it will randomly drop to below the red for a while and then randomly jump back up to normal. I shut it off and tried to start it again, and the starter had enough juice to turn it over once.

Just wanna know if this is the alternator or is it a bad ground, connection, or plug before i go spending a ton of money.

 

well if it died that quick when it was just sitting there there's gotta be a draw. however i'm not sure why the volt gauges moves on you while running. I had a random problem in my '95 a while back, it wouldn't charge at all intermittently and really pissed me off. just a broken wire that told the alternator when to charge the battery. jumped the wire and never had another problem.

 

Do you have a test light?

 

IMO if the alt wasn't charging you would have never made it to work after jumping a dead battery. I would look for a big draw or a bad battery.

 

Well on the way to work, it kept acting like it wanted to die, but only sometimes. the engine would try to die when i was slowing down to stop so i would have to give it a little gas. Where would i start looking for this draw? and what exactly would i look for? If i just need to run a new wire, thats no problem, i have some extra wire in my car but i just need to know what to look for.

 

look for it with a test light. Take the negative side off the the battery and connect it to the cable and battery. If it lights up, you probably have something drawing the battery.

FYI, I have left the lights on my rear view mirror for 2 days and my car started no problem.

Also, you need to find out what it is before it ruins more than one thing. Used to, parts stores wouldn't warranty an alternator unless you replaced the starter and battery. Most of them would just make you replace the battery. Reason for that is, they can cause each other to go bad.

I would find a battery tester and test the alternator and battery. It could be a bad battery and an alternator that isn't charging much at idle. Reason the car won't stay running at idle.