Well, it's happening again. Damn car wouldn't start this morning (granted it went down to 2 last night, but...) but fired right up when I got a jump.

Drove 5 min. to work shut off; started up fine 50 min. later.

With the car off, the battery reads 12.86V

With neg. cable off, MM connected in line with the cable and post it didn't see a current draw.

Alternator is new and I can tell it's working because with everything (except radio) off and at cruising speed the interior volt gauge reads 14.5V. At idle it reads just a hair below 14V.

At night with lights on and heater on high it reads just below 14V at cruising speed. At idle it reads just a tad below 13V.

I'm officially stumped. There's no draw on the battery, and the alternator is working.

One thing to note, I pulled the BTN fuse with the battery hooked up and used the MM on the fins of the fuse and read 11.5V Not sure if that means anything, just wanted to add that.

Thanks in advance for any help!

-Ian

 

Did you switch the positive lead on the multimeter when you were checking current? That would be my first guess.

There will ALWAYS be some amount of current draw, even with the engine off. The memory curcuits draw between 40-100 mA. Once you get your ammeter working, just start pulling fuses until you find the circuit where the excessive current draw is coming from.

 

After doing some more testing, I found that the *new* alternator may be suspect.

I have a feeling that the previous owner installed an S5 alt on it before. For me to verify that I have a few questions:

Looking at the plug to the back of the alternator, should the black w/white stripe wire be on the top? That's where it is right now, with the White w/black stripe on the bottom. Is the plug on the back the same 'style' connector for both the S4 and S5 alt? Meaning, I know the pinout is different for each series, but is the connector the same?

The "new" alt I bought a couple months ago (as well as this one) has a Mitsubishi stamp on the back of it. The one I took off didn't. Also, the post with the black wire on it seems to be in a different position then the one he had on it before. Like, it's kind of at a different angle than the one he had on it before.

-Ian

 

mitsubishi makes tv's too....(love that quote)

I know that the s5 turbo and s5 N/A alternators are different in that the black post is mounted differently to make room for the stock TMIC I assume. I ran into that problem before, just had to bend the post sideways, no problem. and no, the connections are different.

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