Had a few weird things happening with the car recently.

- Hit the brake and my radio lights will dim
- Use the turn signals and I will notice the radio lights going darker then brighter as they flash
- Have had an ABS INOP light pop on a couple times but then go away when the car is restarted.

I had a racetronix fuel pump with upgrade harness installed which draws power directly off the alternator. Volts are above 13 on the dash like normal and the car starts and drives just fine. Battery is a few month old optima red top.

Anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing my issues?

-brian

 

bad ground for the lights, possibly for the ABS thing as well

 

any idea where the ground(s) are located?

 

I'll see if i can find them, but I would check the rear light harness, that sounds like where the problem is

 

thanks for taking a looking and please let me know if you find out where they are. It would be much appreciated.

 

The ABS ground is on the RH shock tower.

It does sound like a low voltage situation...

 

yeah, the abs issue might be unrelated, but all the lights are related, so, fix those first

 

I'll disconnect everything and clean the ground location to see if that helps. Otherwise I'll pull off the alternator and go have it checked out.

 

I know this is a fine point but your alt. is NOT designed to power equipment directly. It's designed to recharge the Bat. I would rewire the pump to be powered off the Bat. with a relay.

 

I'm going to go through my connections tomorrow and if everything looks good, would upgrading the alternator hurt anything?

 

No, wouldn't hurt a thing.

 

A better question may be "Will it help anything?".

 

well cleaned and checked the grounds. Everything looks good from that pt. No changes occured. I took off the alternator and had it tested...failed for not enough amps. So my guess is my 10 yr old 75k alternator is finally not able to keep up. My optima battery was probably keeping my weak charging system going. Ordered a new slightly higher output 160A alternator and see how that does.

-Brian