Heyyy people of honda-tech, well my 04 civic ex has been giving me some problems and throwing codes for the past 11 days or so. I have had the ABS and BRAKE light flickering on so naturally i thought it might be a wheel bearing or even a faulty ABS sensor gone bad. Well when i put my car on the diagnostic reader i was shocked that the code was a low battery voltage code. Nothing to do with the brakes at all, so i had the alternator bench tested seeing how i just put a brand new battery in two weeks ago. I was expecting a low level of voltz to be put out, but come to another shocking surprise i had seen the alternator over charging at 17.5 volts on a 12v battery, lol. I have never seen this before, now seeing with our alternators being internally regulated the only solution is to rebuild or swap in a new one, was wondering if anyone else had the same problem?

 

HOLY COW 17.5!... Well it's not necessarily the alternator itself. I'll see if I can find the sites with the specs. that describes everything but... Your ELD and ECU also control your alternator/charging system. If you are getting a voltage reading somewhere ex. if your alternator is telling your ecu that it's not charging enough, the ecu will keep telling your alternator to continue to increase charging...

I'll try to find the site, but our alternators are a pain in the butt. It really is ridiculous everything that's accounted for in the charging system.

*edit* Found one http://pw1.netcom.com/~gentile...1.htm This may help you understand and diagnose your problem.


Modified by thinknology at 10:52 AM 9/6/2007

 

It's not the alternator per say, but its more of the fact that the alternator is internally regulated, on older cars the alternator and regulator used to be 2 seperate parts, on most new cars they are now one, my regulator had **** the bed making the alternator go into a constante state of high voltage charging.

 

I had this problem before, the thing that give me a sign that i have a faulty alternator is when my battery indicator in my HU pioneer DEH7750 read at 15 volts. better to replace the alternator immediately or else all your fog lights, headlights almost all bulbs will be damaged and it will damaged your ECu I reckon. I have my two foglights busted when it happen to me.

Edit: our alternator has embbeded regulator, so no need to find regulator outside the assembly .
BTW, i think you need to replace a new battery again after replacing the alternator i'm sure that battery is already damaged because of unregulated voltage coming out from alternator.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by GIXXERMAN83 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">It's not the alternator per say, but its more of the fact that the alternator is internally regulated, on older cars the alternator and regulator used to be 2 seperate parts, on most new cars they are now one, my regulator had **** the bed making the alternator go into a constante state of high voltage charging.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yes I know the alternator has an internal regulator, and I may be wrong here but I think if your regulator is gone you will not be making any power what-so-ever, as all of your measurments and all the power goes through the regulator. Thus why I'm thinking it's something else.

Maybe your FR wire (alternator charging rate) isn't sending the correct signal to you ecu or your C (charge control) is not sending the correct signal. Something to think about, unless you have already fixed the problem?? I would test these and make sure before spending the money to fix something that is not broken.

 

When your PS pump is leaking it will damage your alternator. notice that PS pump is above the alternator. better check that one too.

 

Yeah it has been happening now for about a week, but i havent been driving the car barely this past week as well, i have been on my motorcycle so that why i have been blowing out headlights left and right, lol. I was using the sylvania silverstar ultra's love em but i noticed when i was drivin my headlights would be pulsating, like geting brighter then diming out to normal. Now i know its the reason because of the faulty regulator throwing more volts to the car, lol. I did get my money back from the sylvania headlights and my Power steering pump is good, just the regulator was bad thats all, i only have 46K on the car.

 

Ohh ok so you already fixed it...

 

Yeah i had it done in about 2 hours, no hoses were leaking, only the regulator **** the bed, so now all my codes are gone and she's running like a champ in the special olympics, back to daily commuting with her now, lol.