Hi there.

The last few weeks the battery light has been remaining on for the first few minutes of every journey before going off. The night before last, it remained on for the entire journey. Last night, it's stuck on, and the check engine light has come on as well.

Never had any power issues so far with lights etc, never failed to start, but I don't really want to take it anywhere now.

Multimeter readings across battery:
Engine off, ignition off: 12.23v
Engine running: 11.61v, going down to 11.53v over the minute I'd held the prongs on for.
Engine running, lights on: 11.12v

Hope the alternator hasn't snuffed it, but I get a feeling it has.

Thanks for any help.

 

alternators gone 100% if thats your readings either that or broken wire. should be 12v non running and 14v ish running independant of whatever revs.

99/00 are three wire but ones a dummy when looking for replacement.

 

Is the belt tight?.

 

Thanks chaps. Yep the belt is tight!

Just a pain in the **** really, don't have any tools to tension belts, and every garage I speak to isn't open until 5th Jan. Bugger!

 

You don't need any special tools to change the alternator. Decent socket set should do.

The belt tension you can just do by feel twisting between finger and thumb. You can mark the adjuster bolt so you have a rough idea where it should be.

 

Thank you, looked into it more, didn't realise it was such a simple job to do. Found one locally for sale on fleabay, hopefully the seller will let me pick it up.

Cheers

 

No worries, takes a bit of twisting, rotating and pulling to get it in and out but it will just fine.

 

Got the old one off fine, put the new one on, tensioned the belts and bolted everything up. It's then I realised I had a 3 pin plug, and now had a 2 pin socket.

Bollocks!!

The replacement was from a facelift 1998 car so assumed it would be the same. Woops. Oh well, only set me back £30, time to find another...

 

See if you can get some replacement brushes - almost certainly the problem.