Hi guys,

Im a new member , just signed up. I recently bought my first car(last week) 96 Neon with 146km on engine. And everything ran fine untill yerstaday , when i stalled my car and trying to start it again it wouldnt turn over.

I got a friends of mine to boost me, and the car started. We took it for a drive thinking maybe i just accidentaly drained the batery, but it wouldnt charge and all my gauges are goin bananas if i press gas.

So we were thinking maybe its either alternator or a bad batery. We checked the battery and it holds the charge and is good. Somewhere on the forums we read that if we disconnect the battery while the car is running and it dies, than it means the alternator is bad. we did that but the car still ran?

Also i've been told that it could be the voltage regulator?


Please any of you guys if you have some ideas, share them as i really need the car back on the road.

Thanks so much!

 

1. happend to me what was wrong with mine was my main ground wire from the battery was loose...check it out..it wasnt off is was just loose and fudged everything up..

 

kinda sounds like a voltage drain.

in order to find what is draining the batt youll need a voltmeter. attach your voltmeter to the batt and see if the volatge is slowly going down. if it is start fulling fuses until you see a rise in voltage


the voltage regulator is inside the engine contorl unitl (ECU) and is unaccessible.

the ground is another good place to start if your not getting the alt to charge the battery.

 

If the volatage regulator is bad, your alternator will charge too much making your battery boil. Does it smell like acid under the hood?
To check if your battery is bad, check the date it was purchased. A better way is to check the code for when it was made. 5 years is about the limit on car batteries. You can take it to a shop that can load test batteries if you want. I don't know a work around for that.

If it's your alternator, it won't charge like it's supposed to. With the car running, you should be able to put a volt meter on the battery terminals and have them read 14 or so amps. Lower than that and your alternator is not putting out enough juice. (my daily driver has a bad alternator. Every time I start my car, it get's just that much harder to start. Eventually, it won't start at all and I'll have to charge the battery up again.)

Some free stuff to try is just clean your battery terminals. Another one is to check and make sure your alternator belt isn't slipping.

To test for a short, you can remove a terminal from the post on the battery thus severing the connection. If you then hold the terminal close, sometime you will get a small arc. If all appliances are off, there should be no juice flowing from the battery. This is just a tiny bit dangerous since sulfuric acid is explosively flammable. Not too bad though. You can just pour a solution of baking soda and water over the top of the battery and it will neutralize the acid. Baking soda is also pretty good for getting rid of that nasty corrosion.

I'd say go with the free stuff first, including the ground. Run a Ghetto ground just to check the hypothesis that the ground is indeed the problem. If a secondary ground strap makes no difference, there's no reason to believe the first one is FuBar.