I'll start from the beginning. My 91 hatch has been running flawlessly since the day I bought it 3 years ago. Last week I noticed that when I started the car the battery light would come on, then go out if I revved it a tad. "Okay, just need to up the idle a hair, no prob."

Today at lunch, my cd player decided to cut out. Straight out. No clock, no lights, nothing. Then came back on a few seconds later. It continued this process over the next 15 mins of driving. "Okay, check the harness connections this weekend, live without the stereo for the time being."

Tonight, I headed out and started my car to notice my seatbelt buzzer sounded a bit scratchy, def not normal. Car started fine, let it warm up for a few mins. Turned my lights on to see I had no low beams. "WTF?! Ok, calm down." I turned the headlights completely off, then on again. Still nothing. I turned on my high beams to watch my Sylvania Silverstars sizzle with many colors before burning out.

At this point, it's too cold outside(35 degrees) to go through all my fuses, harnesses, and whatnot. I'm guessing it might be a voltage regulator problem of the alternator, but I'll be honest. I don't have a ******* clue what's going on here. If you have any advice, please god post it. I'm gonna need to fix this soon, it's my DD.

 

Sounds like how my old eclipse behaved when the alternator went bad. It was still sending a little bit of charge to the battery, so it wasn't draining completely, it just made all the electricals go out and come back on.

 

it could be a bad regulator in the alternator.... instead of too low voltage, too high, which could cause fuses and lights to blow.... look into that... check your voltage when the car is idleing and also when its revved a little... it should not go more than 14.6 ish I would say

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by aaronhume &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">it could be a bad regulator in the alternator.... instead of too low voltage, too high, which could cause fuses and lights to blow.... look into that... check your voltage when the car is idleing and also when its revved a little... it should not go more than 14.6 ish I would say</TD></TR></TABLE>

Awesome. Keep em' coming.

 

check the battery itself, if your vents are to low on water youll definetly have a charging problem, Low water is a sure good way of frying your battery....

 

It's an Optima yellow top, completely sealed. Been using it for 2 years now, so it's always charged.

And I'm not sure if I made it very clear, my headlights aren't dimming. They are blowing = too much power. I just don't know from what.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Riceburner247 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">It's an Optima yellow top, completely sealed. Been using it for 2 years now, so it's always charged.

And I'm not sure if I made it very clear, my headlights aren't dimming. They are blowing = too much power. I just don't know from what.</TD></TR></TABLE>
oh ok you didnt mention a yellow top...Well it does sound like your voltage regulator, put a voltage tester on it and read your data....

 

Word, I think I'll do that. It's the only thing I could think of being wrong, but you never know, so I had to ask.

Now tomorrow when I'm driving this thing around, obviosly it's gonna be light out so I won't need my headlights. Am I going to risk frying up any other wiring? What are the risks? The reason I ask, I might have to drive 25 miles to a buddy's shop.

 

If I were you Id resort to driving without anything that could spike your volts...Stereo(which you said is already INOP), you know what im getting at......

 

you should honk your horn and see if its extra loud lol....

well I don't know if the ecu is that sensitive to the higher voltage, but it would be unwise to drive it very far or too often until you can change the alternator.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by aaronhume &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">you should honk your horn and see if its extra loud lol....</TD></TR></TABLE>

You know what's fucked up, I swore when I was driving tonight that my cluster lights were brighter than normal.

 

Okay, just went out and checked some fuses. All of my headlight fuses are fine. Somehow my bulbs are burning, but not burning the fuses? I gotta go to work, this is fucked up.

 

that would make sense, as it takes quite a lot of excess energy or a short to blow a fuse, lets say for example, it would take a 10 am fuse something greater than about 15 amps for probably 20 seconds before it will blow, and when the difference is just in volts, gove or take a few from 12V thats not enough extra energy to blow the fuse, but just enough to burn out the headlight. if it were a short, the fuse would blow right away.

 

As I was driving today, the battery light came on. I just went and bought a new alternator. I'm gonna put it in here in a minute, see what happens.