If your vehicle has a bad, worn, or damaged alternator, you might notice a few things, including dim or flickering headlights, electrical components like power windows and locks not working properly, your vehicle stalling, an indicator light on the dash, or a dead battery. While you drive, the ALTERNATOR charges the battery to make sure the battery doesn't weaken while you drive. The electrical system would quickly drain the battery, leaving your vehicle without power. Without a working ALTERNATOR, the battery wouldn't be able to last very long. The battery helps start your vehicle and run the electrical system. If your car needs a new ALTERNATOR, make sure it's a quality ALTERNATOR from OMNIPARTS. Your vehicle can't run off the battery alone, which is why the ALTERNATOR is crucial. Maybe he meant the alternator wasn’t working.The ALTERNATOR helps keep your vehicle running. Usually that’s hot to ground but if there’s no ground then a lower voltage becomes that lower potential and electrical things start acting weird.Īnother area to have someone check is the voltage regulator, although your symptons don’t suggest it, you never know.Īlso, alternators don’t “hold a charge”, only batteries do that. Electricity flows from a higher to lower potential. It really sounds like you have a grounding problem.ĭC current can play tricks on your system. If it’s just in the instrument panel, you might try another grounding wire between any metal part in the panel to the car body. Any thick copper wire from the engine block to the car body will work. If it’s corroded replace it, or maybe just try a jumper wire for a day and see if it makes a difference. Look around in the engine compartment for a thick wire like a battery cable, that goes between the block and body. Not familiar with Vibes but all cars have a grounding strap running from the body to the motor. I haven’t taken it into a mechanic yet so I might have to just go ahead and do that. I’m just trying to figure out where to go from here without replacing a whole bunch of parts that might be unrelated. I know that there is a pending recall on the ECU for the 05 Vibe, could the computer be causing any of these issues? The car has close to 90,000 miles on it so there might be something else that is failing that ended up killing the old alternator.Ĭould these problems be due to a failing belt tensioner? Could a loose belt cause these issues through the entire RPM range? Now the battery light is also flickering constantly while I’m driving. This morning I noticed the airbag light was on and the flickering on the instrument panel started occuring again. It’s been two days since I changed the alternator and now more electrical problems are starting to show. I was able to bring the old alternator in for a bench test and the tech there told me that it wasn’t holding a charge. I went ahead and replaced the alternator.Īfter replacing the alternator the issues went away and using a multimeter I was able to test the voltage coming from the alt. Everything checked out okay except for the alternator voltage. The lights on the instrument panel and headlights would dim when certain systems would pull more current such as the brakes or AC Fan.Īfter getting to the point where the radio would shutoff everytime I pressed the brake pedal I brought the car to an auto parts place and had them do an electrical diagnostic. So starting a couple of weeks ago I started experiencing some electrical problems that were pointing to the alternator.
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