My girlfriend bought a POS '95 Civic for $600 bucks. Wouldn't start one day. I took the battery to AutoZone, they charged it, tested it, and said it was bad. I bought a new one. Car worked alright for a day. Then it died on her in the middle of a busy street. I towed it home (go Jeep! ) and thought it might be the alternator. I took a look and noticed the belt was a bit loose so I tightened it. Jumped it, pulled out my multi-meter and the battery was charging at like 6V, but then it out of nowhere jumped up to 13V. Cool, I thought. Must have been the belt. I took it around the block and it ran fine (relatively speaking, of course. it runs pretty rough). It even ran for about 15 seconds with the negative off the battery. Later that night she started it up to warm it up in the driveway. Came out 3 minutes later and it was dead. Today I jumped it again and the battery was charging at like 8V and slowly dropped to 6V and eventually died. Is the alternator bad? Or could it be something that controls the alternator? Excuse my ignorance, I don't know much about Hondas.

BTW, I tried to pull the alternator to bring it in to AutoZone to have them test it and the bottom bolt is absolutely stuck in there. I spent almost 5 hours trying to get that bolt out. I must have used a half a can of PB Blaster and that son of a bitch wont come out. It's so cramped down there, anyone got any tips on getting that bolt out?

 

I don't know if it's the alternator, but i had this exact problem with that long bottom bolt taking my alternator out a couple days ago. There is no easy solution, as you can't take the mount bracket out either. Here's what did work for me, I pushed and pulled the alt back and fourth to the extreme limit, I even used a hammer to force it to the limit. Then I used a big heavy hammer to hit the bolt repeatedly, using both hands on the hammer as sort of a lever, I had to take the wheel off to get more room. I finally got it to move then it was pretty easy to push though putting a screw driver in the hole after it. The only bad part is I need a new bolt as it got deformed from repeated hammering. I also forgot when your pushing it back and forth when you have it towards the firewall side you can see the back of the bolt, it's a square, You can try to get a flat head screw driver between that and the bracket.

 

Thanks for the input. With 5 hours of banging and prying with every prybar I have, I got about a quarter inch between the square head and the alternator. I'll have to try jiggling the alternator around.