For the last 3 days I've been having issues with my charging system. The alternator is a little over 3 months old and had been working fine until last Friday when on the way home from work the check gauge light comes on and my voltage gauge was pegged left as in not charging at all. I got to the house put it on the battery charger and after it reached 100% tried it, again not charging. I moved the connector around and it started charging. I replaced the connector and it was operating fine then this morning on the way work the problem arose again. this time I'm out in the middle of nothing but corn fields. I spotted a church and pulled in the parking lot, the church luckily had external electrical socket and Ii plugged my battery charger into it , charged my battery to 100% and decided to try to make it as close to home as possible before it died. When I first started the truck it was showing barley charging then it went up to a fully charging and after about 6 mile flat lined to no charge. I was a 38 minutes from the house and went for it and made it all the way home. What could be causing the bad cell in the battery, alternator gone bad already?

 

There are a few things. Bad alternator (quality control isn't what it used to be), bad plug at the alternator, bad wiring, (did the truck ever die on you?) If not maybe your gauge is bad, or a blown fuse.

 

If the gauge is dropping to pretty much zero, you have a bad connection somewhere. Even if the alternator is NOT charging, you should still see battery voltage on the gauge. If the engine is still running, that's gotta be over 10 volts or so. Think I would start looking at fuses and connections at the PDC.

 

From your description having issues with that plug, there might be a problem with the alternator wiring internally to that plug. Or issues with that new plug since you did get it working again.

 

HeyYou has a valid point about the voltage indication which sort of rules out the alternator as being the problem. Looking at the diagrams in my Haynes Dodge Pick-ups manual (sometimes known to be wrong), the voltage gauge gets its reading from the ignition switch, thru a fuse, and directly to the gauge. The ground side of the gauge is common to a number of other things and if you have a tach in the dash and it's working, the problem is on the voltage side coming from the ignition switch. This wire goes to the gauge and then continues to an unspecified location in the diagram that I'm looking at -- my guess is that it goes to the computer. The next time you see this problem, put a voltmeter on the battery. You may not have a charging problem at all.