Honda Car Forum

On Mon, 01 Sep 2003 20:00:16 GMT, me@homeoffice.com (Uncle Mike)
wrote:

>
> My '88 Civic shows a running battry volttage of about 12.8 v.
>Shouldn't it be 13.6? My last alternator over-charged and
>destoyed a battery, I replaced it with a used one and a rebuilt
>alternator. Is it uncharging or is the battery dieing?

The voltage at the battery from the alternator should be higher than
12.8V.. However, it may not be the battery or the alternator. It
could be voltage drops in the wiring. The only way to know for sure
it to test everything and be especially wary of voltage drops.

Before replacing things, find out why your last alternator cooked a
battery. On a 15 yr old car, I'd start by looking for corrosion on
the wires and at voltage drops.

My 0.02

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In article <2dmalvg4tcaie7al22at1c5ombjivierkr@4ax.com>, nntp@spamsack.org wrote:
>On Mon, 01 Sep 2003 20:00:16 GMT, me@homeoffice.com (Uncle Mike)
>wrote:
>
>>
>> My '88 Civic shows a running battry volttage of about 12.8 v.
>>Shouldn't it be 13.6? My last alternator over-charged and
>>destoyed a battery, I replaced it with a used one and a rebuilt
>>alternator. Is it uncharging or is the battery dieing?
>
>The voltage at the battery from the alternator should be higher than
>12.8V.. However, it may not be the battery or the alternator. It
>could be voltage drops in the wiring. The only way to know for sure
>it to test everything and be especially wary of voltage drops.
>
>Before replacing things, find out why your last alternator cooked a
>battery. On a 15 yr old car, I'd start by looking for corrosion on
>the wires and at voltage drops.
>
>My 0.02

My fifteeen year-old car just got it's 4th alternator (3 battery was
last May) today, this time it wasn't putting out amps - at idle, -. 2 A.
in fact, so said the Amp/Voltage/Resistance test. 3 years ago another
alternator overcharged the battery, after a 75 min. run on the highway the
sealed battery was bulging out, smoking and was too hot to touch.
And it remained so for 15 minutes. This is my only complaint about
the car, it has otherwise been very "Honda" like. There have been
no other electrical problems, just rebuilt alternators that fail.



"alot is not a word"
Uncle Mike