Cant Hold A Charge

[jjbrasil]

the other week i was on the freeway and all of my guages started going on and off and then the car started sputtering, I got a little furthur and then it finnally died.....i got a freind to jump start me and i got it home luckly. I then replaced the battery and the alt. and i drove it around for about a day and then the same thing happened!....i checked my alt fuse its not blown, and i swapped out the alt relay with a freind of mine and still nothing! i took the alt. and battery both back to murrey's and they tested fine, while the car is runnin its reading about 11volts real low.....im kinda out of ideas any help as to what i should check. thanks

 

[DSMeclipse4G63]

did you actually test the alt fuse and relay with a voltmeter? I took a look at mine and it looked fine then I tested it and it was shot... The only other reason would be a loose wire or crossed wire...
Andrew

 

[jjbrasil]

ill check the fuse and relay tomorrow but what wires could be corroded or crossed...im just trying to figure out more ideas and cut down on what could NOT be causing the problem...if u could let me know what i should look for that would be great. I need my car for work

 

[dicion]

look for bare/rubbed/stripped wires rubbing against the engine/body/etc. Look for sparks when running... stuff like that.

 

[pianoman]

i went through 3 alternators in one week. the stocker blew, so i had a 1 year old one on my gst with a blown motor but never even ran the altenator for a week. swapped that one. it lasted 2 days. took it back to car quest, got another one. that one crapped in a day. took that one back and got another one which worked for 4 days. now when i brought this one back they started to give me funny looks. i had them test it and it was bad, but what i found out is that they are all rebuilds. i don't even know if you can buy a brand new altenator. and all of them were from a super crappy batch of rebuilds. they looked at them before they sent them back, and i guess the brushes on the inside were all fubar. so it just might be the altenator. by the way the last one they got from a diffrent car quest, and it was fine. so maby its the altenator.

 

[jjbrasil]

yea the guy already gave me weird looks the last time i took in my alt. I kinda dont feel like going back cuz thier not the kindest people sometimes, and they give u the look like...u dont know anything about carz but i did take my multilog voltmeter and measured resistance from the pos terminal of the battery to the pos of the alt....so i think the wires should be good, ive looked everywere for wires cut and what not..so i dunno maybe ill just have to take my alt. back in if u guys have any more ideas that would be great!

 

[pianoman]

did any of the previous owners have any sort of electronics installed? like a cell phone or anything else? on my previous gsx, the previous owner installed a turbo timer and did a shitty job, and the car would just shut off while driving, and i had to wiggle the harness to get it started agian, and after i sold it the guy who bought it had to replace the all the wiring under the dash cause the turbo timer fried it all....

oh yeah one more thing, this my tsi, all my dashlights just stopped working, and i believe it was some fuse that had nothing do it with it.