So I've got a 1990 GXL that didn't want to turn over last monday morning. I thought it was just due to the cold. Jumped the car and we were in luck. Went and get a new battery, since the old one was about 4 years old. Threw that in there, worked great for that day. Let it sit overnight, next morning, same thing, dead battery. I thought it was my deck that was hooked straight up to my battery, disconnected that and jumped it, was hoping that the alternator would charge the battery again. I went to work. 6 hours later, I'm jumping the car again in the lot at work. So it drained again. Brought it home and let it sit in the drive way. Today I took the battery out of the car and am charging it in the garage right now. I was reading some topics on the forums saying that a bad or miswired Alternator could possibly drain the battery when sitting. The Alternator isn't miswired I donlt believe, it is a S5 alternator. So possible its just a bad Alternator then? What I'm going to do is recharge the battery, then hook it back up to the car with out the alternator plugged in. If the battery doesn't drain, then I know i have a bad alternator, and if it still does then I'm SOL on some electrical system failure. I just wanted to know what you guys thoughts were on this particular issue.

 

Couple of things. Start the car and put a multimeter to the battery. See if you're getting around 14-15V. If not, and you can take the alt out, have Autozone or similar test it.

If it's a battery drain, there's a way to check how much of an electrical load there is. It involves disconnecting the + at the battery and putting a multimeter on Amps. Then you start removing fuses. But I'm a bit cloudy on the actual process.

 

my best friend:

 

God I can't wait to move out of this shitty state....

 

Yup, Autozone confirmed it, bad Alternator. And this one only had under 1000 miles on it. That was kind of lame. At least I didn't buy that one.

 

replace the brushes. way cheap. and bam you got a new alt

 

Replace the junk factory alternator with a more substantial unit...

 

Definitely upgrade time.

My original s4 alt crapped out 2 years ago thanks to the winter here in Ohio. What I did was get a FD alternator with a FC dual sheave pulley for $50 on ebay. Re-read the FAQ and you'll see more about it. It definitely makes a lot of difference to have 100 amps available

 

yea I put an S5 alt on my S4, it was very easy to do

btw, you shouldn't jump start a frozen battery, but I wonder what you would do if your battery was frozen and you had to drive somewhere? I guess poor some hot water on it? idk.

 

I'm sure it wasn't frozen, was only about 5-10 degrees. I just ordered a new one from Carquest. Got here overnight~ Runs Beautifully with the new Battery~ I'll probably do the FD Alternator Upgrade someday~ Right now isn't the time for me~~

 

cool, but if your talking 5-10 degrees farenhieght then that would be freezing. ?!? glad you got it fixed.

 

HAHA that's funny. I'm actually visiting home (aka. Minneapolis) for the holidays and YES it's chilly! Where are you guys located? I haven't hung out with some MN rotor heads in a while...

 

my car had its original s4 alternator in it until the day I pulled the engine, it went through close to 20 New York winters.

Replace your alternator and then the key is to buy a really good battery, not some $25 bullshit battery.