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Old Feb 20, 2007 | 09:52 PM
  #1  
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Default Yahoo! Alternator.

Since I bought my car in December (99 A4 formula) all of the exterior/interior lights constantly flicker like crazy at night (well all the time but obviously most noticeable at night). I seriously felt like I was at a rave sometimes, Sandstorm playing in the distance

Anyway I had a good feeling it was the alternator, even though the car is low mileage (28k). Instead of doing any real diagnosing I just bought a used alternator from someone on the board.

I am proud to say I now have nice, continual, uninterrupted lighting

This is more or less a useless thread but I just had to share my joy. It is the little things that make Keliente happy.
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Old Feb 20, 2007 | 09:55 PM
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hmm, this is a constant problem with alot of the guys cars on here, mine does it periodically.....guess it just pissed you off enough
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Old Feb 21, 2007 | 01:31 AM
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Originally Posted by keliente
It is the little things that make Keliente happy.
SWEET!!!! I have a chance!!!!






mine, does some flickering when i turn the A/C on and off, i guess thats normal though. im not worried, when my battery quits charging, then ill worry.
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Old Feb 21, 2007 | 08:26 AM
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Originally Posted by keliente
Anyway I had a good feeling it was the alternator, even though the car is low mileage (28k).
Sometimes this will happen with lower mileage cars. If the battery was allowed to discharge significantly during long periods of sitting without use and/or not allowed to fully recharge due to short local trips, and the alternator was forced to constantly recharge a nearly dead battery on a regular basis, this can certainly damage it.

The alternator is not designed to continually recharge dead or near-dead batteries. It’s just there to maintain a normal state of charge on a good condition battery. Not to mention, if the previous battery was bad and not properly accepting a charge, then this will be bad for the alternator over time as well.
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Old Feb 26, 2007 | 09:06 PM
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hmmm,,, funny my car has 29k on it and whata you know I think my darn alternator took a crap on me! My voltage meter has been whacked for a couple of weeks now! And today my fuse for my dash cluster keeps blowing out! Soon as I put a new fuse in and turn my key on I hear that sucker pop! My voltage on my way to work cranked up to somewhere between 14 and 18... I hope I havent caused further damage.
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Old Feb 26, 2007 | 09:34 PM
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mine just ate **** and died last week...Though I hope its my alternator, I'm pretty sure of it....I was driving and everything in my car slowly started to die and my voltage went from the norm to 8 volts!...then I finally stopped...stalled out and wouldn't turn back on...not to hijack or anything but since we're on the topic of alt's..sound like an alt to anyone else here?
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Old Mar 4, 2007 | 10:03 PM
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My problem was an alternator, or should say voltage reg... I also found a bare wire that was causing me some problems too.
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Old Mar 5, 2007 | 08:59 AM
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just got mine back on friday, was having the same problem with lights flickering.
warranty got me a new alternator, and now everything is back to normal.
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