I replaced the alternator and battery about 3 weeks ago and the car has run fine ever since. Yesterday though, the car wont charge now. The battery is ok, but when the car runs, the voltage stays right around 12-13v like when its off. My #1 sparkplug is loose too which may have been crossthreaded. I was also thinking that maybe the starter is bad and drawing a lot of amperage? Any ideas? Could the loose sparkplug contribute?

 

Also, just now I used sandpaper on the connection on the back of the alternator that goes to the battery and the car charges at around 16v now instead of going to 14v at startup and dropping right down to 12-13v where the battery puts out its power. I did the sandpaper trick about 2 weeks ago and it just went back down to where it was yesterday. I know the very same thing will happen and the car will eventually wont charge like it was doing in a never ending cycle until I find out whats wrong.

Any suggestions are welcome.

 

Well, to start off. I think your starter has nothing to do with your charging problem, unless your solenoid is for some reason grounding out or something, I don't really know. Next, the spark plug can't be it. Third, when you say not charging, do you mean that it slowly drops in voltage till it dies? Or does it just seem to be charging low? I would be more inclined to think that you should take off your alternator wire and clean it off real well. Another thing to think about. I had a problem one time when I rinsed down my engine. Inside the small connector on the alternator some water had grounded out the connection. This was actually causing my system to charge at roughly 16 volts which is far to high. But was fixed by drying out this connector. Have you removed it to clean it and made sure it is contacting the small pin correctly. Could be a good starting point.

What have you checked so far?

 

Well I've checked every connection I could between the alternator, battery and all the grounds. All are fine. I cleaned off the connection to the alternator for the second time. There is a nut that holds the pin connection to the alternator so its firmly contacting the surface. But the car began charging fine between 14-15v and is now on the decline once more. It went all the way down to 12-13v and hasnt died (yet).

 

Just now on my way home from work my car was charging ok but still declining from a little more than 14v. It took about 3-3.5 seconds for it to start and has never taken that long before. 5 min later when I got home I turned off the car and then restarted it (fired right back up) and it was down to about 12v. I'm having the battery/alt/starter all checked tomorrow and I'm hoping its as simple as one of them being bad. It would suck because the alt. and battery are 3 weeks old but the starter is the original with 88k on it. I hate how problematic this thing has been.