Hello, my sister has a 2002 Accord EX V6 sedan. She says she was driving home from work and all the panel lights came on, even the door open lights. The car continued to run and restarts when turned off. I live a thousand miles away so was not able to look at it myself, so I told her to take it into an autozone or something similar to have the alternator voltage output checked. The lights turned off when she was on her way, but she went ahead and took it to Pep Boys. They said the alternator read fine but the battery was bad. She purchased a new battery and went home without the lights coming back on. Unfortunately, she called again today and the lights are back. Any ideas? The car has 175k miles. Thanks in advance!

 

Likely a bad alternator. I genuinely don't trust AutoZone/Advance Auto to test it or the battery - my experience is their techs don't know what they're testing.

 

Ok, thanks. She's taking it back today. Maybe she'll get a more competent person this time.

 

Well, she took it somewhere different and sure enough, the alternator is going bad. She went back to the Pep Boys to ask about her supposedly bad battery (which was only 2 years old) and they are saying that it read 12.65 volts but that it wasn't holding a charge, claiming it has a bad cell. Sounds like BS back peddling to me because they screwed up and had her buy a battery she doesn't need. Thoughts?

 

The alternator should be sending ~14V while the car is running across the battery.

Battery should be ~12V. I will say ~3-5 years for a battery seems to be it's age. So if you are at a 6 year old battery (or more) replacing it wouldn't be a terrible thing.