Lately I've been experiencing some weird problems. My headlights/tailights dim when I'm stopped at a light in gear or when I'm sitting in park. When I'm at a stoplight with my foot on the brake the rpms bounce around a little too but they never go below 500rpms or exceed 1000rpms. This happens even when my heater & stereo is off. So I figured alternator right away. So I tested the alternator and then the battery. The alternator sits at 14.5v with nothing on. 14.2v with heater and headlights on. and 12.5v-14.2v with the stereo on. Obviously the stereo draws more when a bass note hits or it's turned up really loud. All the number's I've listed are when the car is in park/neutral. If I give it a bit of gas the volts don't drop below 14.0v no matter what is on or how loud the stereo is. I also have a 1.0 farad cap to provide a little more juice when the power starts to drain. And the battery is 100%.

Can anyone here give me an idea as to what's going wrong? It's quite a frustrating problem.

TIA,
Ryan

 

hm, you might check electrical connections..clean the battery posts and put some terminal grease on them, make sure your connectors arn't corroded, check your ground and power cables at their connecting points on the engine for corrosion and clean & grease them..add some ground straps and/or buy a ground kit from Matt93SE..you really can't be grounded too well..I've got 6 copper/silver tinned copper braids running from my battery to the body and one 2 ga ground cable running to the ground point on the engine in addition to the stock cable..I don't know that any of this is the cause of your problem, but it's a thought..

 

Yeah I'm already planning to do that for sure this month or next. I'm just looking for another possible cause to my problems because replacing the grounds will help but its still hit and miss.
thanx