Archived Do I have alternater trouble?

[DDT]

I was driving down the road and the check gauges light came on, the alternator gauges was all the way the the left side. I stoped at OReillys, they checked it, it was putting out just over 14 volts. Would this mean my gauge went bad or is there something else I should check?

2000-1 ton with 117 K on it

 

[Sticks]

Check you belt tension, ground straps, and battery connections, and all the connections on the alternator.

 

[DDT]

I tryed to wiggle the connetions last night. but will check it today. I started it this morn and the gauge read normal. I must have a bad connection some where.

 

[BarryG]

DDT:

My truck did that once so I drove straight home to get it figured out. When I restarted at home the gauge read normal. Has been normal ever since. It has been about 2. 5 years. Seems to me I remember reading that other members have had the same happen.

 

[rashwor]

Clean your battery cable connections.

Electrical shorts can cause all kinds of wierd problems and be heck to track down. This tends to be a common point of neglect. Start here. From there, it could be the voltage regulator or alternator. If was told correctly, the voltage regulator is built into the PCM... expensive and not good.

 

[DDT]

Thanks for the input so far.

I called a dealer. The service man told me the guage can and do go bad some times, but it can be tested to be sure. If any gauge goes bad you have to replace the hole cluster of gauges. needless to say a seperate gauge will work for me if needed. He told me to run it untill it happens again, it could be awhile.

 

[Eric_77]

That is what my 96 did and would work fine one day fail the next (light would come on) finally one day while light was on and the alt was not working but then we shut it down and it worked but at lower ouput than norm. Battery never died or was hard to start. I replaced it has worked fine ever since no lights no hard start and batteries show god.

 

[EMD Diesel Power]

grounds, grounds, grounds.



of course that pretty much goes along with checking all the connections for looseness and corrosion.



bad grounds tend to cause the majority of the problems out there. especially with PCM-driven units.



Jeff