Check your Alt Ground

[beast02er]

Really, all these years of having batteries die on me, alternator replacements, having to charge the car up to make sure I didn't end up stranded somewhere with a dead battery.

All those things saying "check your grounds etc etc"

I checked my ground (all those times).....it was grounded. Well, one day I was doing some electrical work and I decided to replace my alt ground because the wire to connector was falling apart......so, new wire, new connector, hooked it up and the car has held charge all winter, driven it a bunch......seems to charge just fine.....must have been the problem after all these years. How many years did I deal with the draining battery.....oh about 12....YEP.

I guess getting wiser with age is true....only took me 12 years to figure it out...

-Bryan

red73

[alpinaguy]

I will try this as well. I have been having the same issue but have checked all grounds and they seem to be fine. When I power all lights, blower, turn indicators and fogs I get a drop in volts even if it is just one of these. I guess I'll go through the system again. Wish me luck.

[SteveJ]

It took me buying an E30M3 to figure that one out years ago.

The early M3's had a real beefy ground to the alternator. Too much beef and not enough flex. They would break and your car would eventually stop. They replaced it with a higher strand count cable to allow more flex.

Short story- I had the cable, didn't replace it. Car stopped running in traffic. Yep. Broken alt ground. I had the part with me. Fixed up and running. I still felt stupid for not changing it as soon as I got the part.

[Kpeters]

I'm going to check this I'm only getting 13.40v-13.55v.

[eastsidebimmer]

I was getting sub-par voltage on both of my cars, so I replaced the regulators with new 14V Hella units (little black box) and I get ~14V on the money. The old metal regulators seem to "work" but not put out enough Vs on an otherwise healthy system.

[adawil2002]

Cleaned mine yesterday among others...usual spring cleaning, today green turn signal dash light blinks once, worked fine last year. Guess I missed a couple.

[alpinaguy]

Just came in from working on mine after reading thread earlier. Found my alternator ground wire was corroded to both ends took it apart and cleaned on wire wheel. It is now reading 13.8 volts from 13.5v but still when I turn on lights there is a drop plus turning on wipers and blower it goes down to under 12 volts. If I also hit brake pedal it goes down about a half volt. So my problem is not at alternator. It's a brand new AL 46 X 318 80 amp. Had it all checked last year including battery and was told all was sound as a pound. Tomorrow will check other grounds but I'm baffled at this point since I checked everything last year to no avail. Any other ideas would be appreciated.

[eastsidebimmer]

try another regulator and see if your readings improve.

[alpinaguy]

My alternator is internally regulated and i was told it checks out fine. Thanks though for the info.