xmod777

any thoughts or opinions would help,

its a 92 civic si hatch,

cars worked fine lately except occasional battery light on dash, what happened was i was driving home and my car stalled, did'nt start back up itself so i got it jumped, then once i started driving i noticed the headlights did'nt work? signal lights did'nt work? dash lights did'nt work? and was all dark in and around the car except the battery light still on the dash. but was able to get home.

next day i charged battery fully up and put it in and car started right up and idled for a while without stalling or anything and headlights and everything turned on fine ???, there were'nt any blinking codes on the ECU and all the fuses were good and none blown?, and it appeared normal and would probably drive, but i did'nt want to risk driving it until i figured out why all that happened so it did'nt happen again?

first thing that i could think of was that it could of been something the mechanic that worked on my car did ? cause i was just coming back from him looking at it, diagnosing why my radiator fan was'nt coming on. it drove fine on the way over there plus 2 days earlier i drove from dallas to austin and back with no problems at all?

he had my drivers door open with key in ignition to "on" position for a while and could that of drained the battery a lot? also he was trying several different fuses, trying any one he could find even if they were too high or low of an amp, so could that of shorted something out & caused problem?

battery is new, got 2-3 months ago, alternator is a remanufactred autozone one & its 4-5 yrs old, alt. belts new & was tight enough.

what should i do? just try to drive it around the block to see if it happens again? or get alt tested good taking out of car? or what?

could it simply be just was a really drained battery?

redm3turbo

you can test the alternator while its in the car. My guess would be the alternator myself.
the battery just starts the car then the alternator takes it from there and recharges the battery. If the battery isn't getting charged from the alt, then yes it'd be enough to dim all the lights and not start the car.

if you got a multimeter you can check the alt.

Civic2Fast

spot on...

gsrekcoupe

test the alternator but I just went thru this i had a new battery and it had a bad cell i'm it and i had the exact symptoms you had

xmod777

i have a multimeter, and did test it (forgot to mention that), it read 13.? can't remember exactly but around 13 range, and that was with car running with headlights on and air on hi,

but i heard the most reliable way is to take alt out and have "bench tested" at auto store ? is that true ?

i'm putting a better positive battery cable also just so its a real good one.

another thing is i was missing the big alternator thru bolt for couploe years so that alt was'nt mounted properly and might of had play in it and also i had a loose belt for a while cause it squeeled a lot, and i heard both of those things can put wear on an alternator shortening its life? so theres a chance its the alt., couple months ago i did have something happen where i drove back from getting off work (25 mins or so drive) and right when i was almost home the car started losing power and dimmed lights and i was just barely touching the gas and was barely able to crawl home, and it stalled right before i got to park it to the curb outside my place and had to push it rest of way, and i thought alt went bad back then but i saw the belt for the alt was just loose a little enough for it to do that cause after tightening the belt it was ok again.

but when that happened it drained the battery a lot and i went to get it charged at autozone and left it and came back and they said "its not able to hold a charge, must have bad CEL", and since i just bought it recently they just gave me another battery, but i wonder if something like the alt is causing battery to have bad CEL ? like maybe it did it to the newer one they gave me which is the one i have now? and is a reason why stalled or whatever? i don't know....

xmod777

thanks for the replies, i probably overthought this one, cause i this whole time i was assuming it was something worse like a strange electrical problem, but it always ends up being something more simple in the end.

after putting a new positive battery cable and making sure connections all good, and battery charged up, i just went to drive it carefully around my neighborhood close by, and see how it acted, and if it stalled i would just park it on a curb and at least it would be close by where i could just walk back home. it started first try and idles good and just has solid battery light, and turned headlights on and did'nt act funny or anything, and i drove around block couple times and it was driving good and normal and did'nt feel like it was going to stall or anything weird, so since it seemed ok, i drove to house of mechanic i know which was about 15 mins away on mostly highway, and i made it to his place without problem, he looked at it and he fused a couple wires together better by the harness coming out of firewall and checked things with multimeter and testlight, and he said its the ALTERNATOR, just like people thought.

he said check if i had a lifetime warranty on the remanufactured autozone one i had or not? and get replaced or get new one or get rebuilt.

and he did'nt think mattered if its OEM or not, as long as it works should be good enough, and said i can even have them bench test whatever new alt. they give me before even putting in my car, just to make sure its all good beforehand, cause i have heard some are still bad even if they say they are "rebuilt" or "new", so i would feel better doing that.

so hopefully that will solve my problem.

only reason i did'nt think it was the alt. was how my lights did'nt work at all instead of just dimming like they usually do on symptoms of alt. going bad, but i was wrong.