DirtyGhettoKids wrote:didnt your old alternator check out good? why would you waste the money before even inspecting?

No it was no good, 0 volts. I had checked a couple days b4 i bought the new one

0 volts.. how the hell did your car run at all??? battery can only do so much before it gives out..

i am stumped

No idea if this'll help, but when my brake light came on it was due to low fluid level in the reservoir. Might be worth checking, it's quick.

WI_240sx wrote:0 volts.. how the hell did your car run at all??? battery can only do so much before it gives out..

Well i was on my way home when the both lights came on, and i stopped at an Advance Auto about a mile from my house, so i was a quick ride home, and then i parked it until i got the new alternator. To add more to the story, when the part came in, i took my battery out to check it, to see if it needed to be recharged.

They checked it and said it was great, no recharge needed. Then that same day i drove 6 miles on battery alone to my friends house to have the alternator modded and installed.

You will be surprised how far a good battery can get u if u don't put too much load on it. One day in Jamaica i was driving a Nissan sunny (sentra) home when the pulley on the alternator seized (jammed) and almost started a mini fire with the belt skipping on it. I took off what remained of the belt, turned off all the accessories, and drove that ***** 25 miles home. Woke up the next day and drove 3 miles to get it fixed.

The key is not to have any strain on the battery, so turn everything off (ac, lights, radio, etc) and drive the car conservatively (no high revs, avoid stop and go traffic, etc)

SILVIAJayS wrote:No idea if this'll help, but when my brake light came on it was due to low fluid level in the reservoir. Might be worth checking, it's quick.

Cool, i understand that, but it was both brake and battery lights on in my case, and not just a brake light. when both lights are on, it means there's some sort of a charging system problem.

huh... thats wierd... ive ran on just alternator before but never done just the battery.. lol

THIS SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME THIS WEEK I HAVE BEEN HAVING MAJOR CHARGING SYSTEM PROBLEMS I JUST PUT IN A SECOND ALTERNATOR THIS MONTH AND A NEW BATTERY I CLEANED MY ENGINE OFF AFTER AND THOSE LIGHTS CAME ON. PULLED THE NEGATIVE OFF BATTERY FOR LIKE A HALF HOUR PUT IT BACK AND THEY CAME BACK ON TURNED CAR OFF THEN BACK ON AND IT WAS GONE CAME ON NEXT DAY FOR LIKE TWO MIN WHEN I STARTED IT THEN WENT AWAY AGAIN AND HAS NOT REAPPEARED SINCE.

Im having the same problem but also my car stopped pulling like the car was out of gas. I put it in nutruel then back in drive and it started back pulling again for a few blocks. I'm new to this forum.

The one thing nobody told the OP to check when this was going on was his ground cable. The cables in these cars get old, they get crusty, and can start throwing out intermittent issues. I've had bad ground cables give me what appeared to be a bad starter. More than likely he had a s*** connection at the negative terminal and never caught it. Check that there isn't a crack in the terminal clamp. That's where mine was, and it wasn't noticeable in the slightest until one day when I was cleaning the terminals, the clamp fell apart.

Other than that, do the usual checks for loose wires and plugs. Have the alternator tested as well. Once the car is running, the battery is out of the equation except to get a float charge from the alternator.

As for your issue of the car having no power from the engine, was it able to rev over 3500 RPM when in gear? I'm eliminating the possibility the car was in limp mode. I don't believe the ECU has any form of undervoltage protection, so it's not in the realm of impossibility for an alternator to deliver low voltage to the ECU and send it all to s***.

One thing I learned you should do is "Always" charge the battery on a charger before getting one tested.
A friend's Ford Exploder failed to start (imagine that?) so' she called me... Yee haw.. So' wth, I jumped her and then the car too! but after that we drove down to get tested. (Tested truck not me/her).
Autozone tests her battery/alt and it showed her battery was bad, "Bad battery! Need a new battery" he said.
Since we have a farm store who sells batteries at half the price of Autozone I decided to take her truck home and go buy a battery there instead. Once at her home I decided to charge it. Humm,oh yaaaa "overnight" .
Why I say charge her I mean' it that long? Well you should see her that's why?
Well' also' because on the way home she mentioned the truck had been sitting awhile.. Well hello' maybe a heads up on that info blondy??..lol

Next morning I get up out of her bed and go to the garage her ex-husband built for my use now and I see his charger shows fully charged. Although I felt really drained, it wasn't..
I drove her truck to the same Autozone to have this battery rechecked and whadda you know its now a "good" battery" and "doesn't need replaced" he said.. That's now been 2 yrs ago, it's still going so I'll go with their second guess..
"CHARGE" it with a charger first or at least try too or it may very well cost you cash when it really shouldn't! Just look what all it cost her!

The parts store is supposed to charge the battery fully before testing to begin with. If doing the check on the car then the checking device is supposed to be good enough to tell you to charge the battery as well. And, if the wrong CCA number is picked out of thin air on the loadtest the battery will fail all day long while being completely good.

Competency matters even on 'simple' things like that.