Hi, I was driving the other night and my charging system light came on, then all the lights inside/outside the car got brighter the higher the RPMS were. I didn't want to hurt it, so I pulled over and turned off the engine.

The next day, my car seems to be running off my battery as it went dead and isn't recharging by the alternator. I've followed the troubleshooting flowcharts in the helms manual and the charging system light doesn't even come on when I turn the ignition on, which would mean there is a short in the wires connecting to the alternator (according to the helms manual) or a bad fuse, but those are all OK.

However, I think the wires are fine and that the voltage regulator may have died. I'll probably take the whole alternator to autozone later today to have it tested, but I wanted to see if there was anything else I should check first.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by bubs &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">all the lights inside/outside the car got brighter the higher the RPMS were. </TD></TR></TABLE>

The regulator seems like a logical cause to me.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 01 LudeDude &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
The regulator seems like a logical cause to me.</TD></TR></TABLE>

That's what I thought, but I was surprised that the helms didn't list it as a possible cause.

Anyway, I took my alternator off (had to skip work for about a half an hour ) and took it to have it tested. They said it was completely dead, so I had to have autozone order me a new one which will be in tomorrow.

It's really irritating because my car was down for about 1.5 weeks while I installed my new turbo kit, then I only got to drive it for half a day until the alternator died! My wife's going to kill me if I have to spend anymore money on my car after this. Somehow I have to convince her that I need a new 3" cat-back