1990 Accord, Battery light comes on occasionally, battery and car died the other day... Light goes out whenever revs exceed 5000........ Seems to hunt for the correct idle speed when the light is on...... I trickle charged it and replaced the belt but no help.......I will try the battery voltage check running and not and see what autozone says tommorrow...... Any ideas?????? 150,000 miles...... is alternator failure common????? Curious george

 

An alternator and/or battery failure on a 13 year old car is not uncommon .

If your voltage at idle is <14 volts I'd say its the alternator.

 

This happened to me. I'm 99.9999999999999% sure it's your alternator.

 

sounds like your alt/ is goind bad, usually the brushes wear out in them/ not too bad of a job to repl. the brushes , but much easier to put on new alt.

 

brushes went out on the alternator. happened to me. replace your alternator. when the revs get to a certain rpm, the brushes are able to make contact thus making the battery light go off because it now thinks everything is working properly. Happened to me last summer.

 

My brushes went at 180K miles. swapped them out for about $25. I have 210k on the car now and alternator is working fine.