thegreatestpenn
New Member
hi, couldn't find 7thgencivic forums anymore so i joined this one. I'm a car audio guy (love the boom) and my 2k2 civic has treated me pretty well until now..
So here's the deal, I've had systems in this car since I bought it and I'm on alternator number 3. I usually have a second batt in the trunk blah blah blah so my electrical is usually sufficient to handle my systems. Lately though I noticed my batt was dying. checked voltage at the batt and sure enough it was around 12V. Turn the car on and it only went to 12.6V at the batt and steadily fell.
Natural reaction was, the alt is dead again. however, when I check voltage at the alternator, I get 14.5V. So i proceeded to rule out a bad alt further by taking the ground connection off the batt to see if the car would turn off. The car stayed on so the alt is still producing. So i took out my second battery in the back and unhooked all my audio equipment to make sure its not draining. No change: at the battery still sitting between 12V-12.6V yet the alt is still at 14.5V.
My belts were recently replaced, but I ruled that to be a non-factor since the alt is still reading 14.5V. I was wondering about the ELD or maybe a voltage regulator issue, but from what I gather the alternator has an internal voltage regulator. So all I can think of is something is sucking up huge gobs of current that shouldn't be. my next step is to pull fuses one by one to see if any normal component is the issue. until then any help as to what is going wrong would be appreciated.
So here's the deal, I've had systems in this car since I bought it and I'm on alternator number 3. I usually have a second batt in the trunk blah blah blah so my electrical is usually sufficient to handle my systems. Lately though I noticed my batt was dying. checked voltage at the batt and sure enough it was around 12V. Turn the car on and it only went to 12.6V at the batt and steadily fell.
Natural reaction was, the alt is dead again. however, when I check voltage at the alternator, I get 14.5V. So i proceeded to rule out a bad alt further by taking the ground connection off the batt to see if the car would turn off. The car stayed on so the alt is still producing. So i took out my second battery in the back and unhooked all my audio equipment to make sure its not draining. No change: at the battery still sitting between 12V-12.6V yet the alt is still at 14.5V.
My belts were recently replaced, but I ruled that to be a non-factor since the alt is still reading 14.5V. I was wondering about the ELD or maybe a voltage regulator issue, but from what I gather the alternator has an internal voltage regulator. So all I can think of is something is sucking up huge gobs of current that shouldn't be. my next step is to pull fuses one by one to see if any normal component is the issue. until then any help as to what is going wrong would be appreciated.