thatseemslegit

My girlfriend has a 2012 civic lx, auto 4dr. She has been having issues the past few days with not being able to start her car. After sitting for 4 hours, not enough power to turn the starter (relay clicking). Jump the car and it's fine. Tested the battery at Autozone and they said its fine. They tested the alternator and said it might need to be replaced. I'm not so inclined to believe him tho, he tested it right at startup and it seems the varying loads on the system changes the alternator output. I know this year has an electronic load detector that controls the alternator output. I'm not sure what the threshold of normal is however. During low load, voltage sits at 12.6. Under high load (lights on) the voltage sits at 14.3~5. Is this normal margins? Drove the car home with lights on, and after letting it sit for 2 hours the voltage was at 12.8v and no parasitic power draws.

holmesnmanny

Yes, those numbers are fairly normal. How many miles ? It's possible somehow the starter is already going out. Autos tend to have the inferior starters.

thatseemslegit

60k miles. It doesn't seem like a bad starter. Dim lights, pulses with the starter relay clicks.sounds like low voltage to me. I wish I had a multimeter when I had the car at a no start condition. I'm thinking now a possible bad ground somewhere, causing intermittent charging.

holmesnmanny

you did an actual parasitic draw test ?

i would say less than 1 percent chance of an issue with the alternator itself

RiPe14yoU

If you had charging issues in the vehicle then the battery light would come on especially if it's under charging. Would look at starter or possibly bad transmission/engine to chassis grounds.

thatseemslegit

Cleaned all grounds and it has not happened again, crossing my fingers that that is the only problem