Thread: Charging System Failure

Greetings,

something wierd happend to me this morning. I had been driving for about an hour on the highway, outside temp was between -2 and +2 farenheit. I stopped at a convenience store for about 5 minutes. When I got back in and started the car, it cranked ok and started fine. About ten seconds later I got a DIC message "Charging System Failure" which lasted only 2 seconds. Instead of continuing to my destination I turned around and went home, just to be safe. The whole way back I kept an eye on the Voltage on the DIC, it read 15.4 the whole way, regardless of radio/heat/cruise.

I went up to Advance, where I bought my battery two months ago, had the system tested. The battery was reading 12.59V and the Alternator was putting out 14.5V under load. On the way there, my right front blinker blew, second time this year.

The guy at advance said that 15.4 is WAAAY too high, that I can start melting wires above 14.8. Thing is, since I had the car it has always run between 14.7 and 15.1 on the highway and 13.2 to 13.8 at idle. Today it idled no less than 14.4.

Any ideas?

thanks.

I was about to ask something similar to this. I have an 04 GTP that I just got on the road, and it's sitting at ~15.1v when cruising. Seems a bit high to me.

-Rob

If the battery is original, from what ive read up to 15.2 is normal. The original AC Delco is a sealed AGM, replacement, non AGM, batteries supposedly can handle up to 14.8.

Ive been doing a little research online, could this happen because of a belt slipping? My idler pully chatters from time to time, and this happend when i had the wheel cocked over to turn hard, could the draw from the PS pump and a failing pulley upset the alternator and make it stop charging for a split second?

15. is to high, your alt is bad.

in my last truck i had my alt go bad, got a rebuilt one, and it was over charging, the truck kept saying charge system failure, alt # 2 same thing alt # 3 worked, charged at 13.8. the other 2 were at 14.8 to 15 +. this was all in one day. put it in the store lot, and it failed, took it off swapped it, 3 times lol

and auto zone's crap alt tester said all of these alts were good too.

and on top of that, the truck would not run right, felt off, like the truck didn't know what to do with more then 13 volts in the system.

I've seem people use voltage boosters to bring them into the low 15's w/o issue.

Tough to make the suggestion. If you say leave it and something cooks that's not good. If you say swap it and that's just what the system is running at..then swapping didn't help.

How about this. Pull the alt and have them test it off the car. Reason being is if there is a sense wire, that can effect the output.

sounds normal to me, but possible battery going bad and alt trying to charge it further. i know i always around 14.8 to 15.2 but im charging more than one batt

Battery tested at 12.6v/650cca engine off. This battery is two months old. From what ive read online, voltage can be a bit higher in extreme cold. Like I said above, it runs at 15v (+/- 0.2) on the highway, and over the past year ive done about 15,000 highway miles with no electrical issues. Im going to chalk this up to a fluke, I know the tensioner needs to be done and the serpentine belt is original AFAIK.