I have been having charging issues and replaced the alternator, belt and battery. Car is still having issues with charging. Does anyone know where the major grounds are located?

 

You have a ground on the engine block by the starter. You have a ground on the passenger side shock tower, and you have a braded ground wire going from the driver side of the block to the chassis. You can remove all these sand down the surface and clean it with some brake cleaner and retighten up the grounds. See if that helps. Also check the wire that goes to the alt and check the wire that bolts to the fuse blocks to see if they are tight. You don't have an UD pulley by chance? Also did you replace your alt with a remanufactured stocker? It wouldn't be the first time someone got a bad reman alt...

 

Yep it was a reman. Ill check it out and all of the grounds. No Pulley though. What would that change if I did?

 

First off check available voltage to the alternator from B+, You should see source voltage. If you have source voltage do a voltage drop test from B+ to alternator, you should not drop more than .5v anything higher and you have unwanted resistance causing the alternator to put out insuficient charge.

Good luck if you have any questions feel free to pm me.

 

My suggestions were to check battery and alternator, but also check grounds. I always suggest the big three, as it might not help with this problem, but it will help in the long run.

 

A Simple voltage drop test on the positive side and negative side will answer you problem. Trust me.

 

usually Vd is a bad thing lol

 

.5v or less not a bad thing. Thats is acceptable resistance caused by cables & contact points.

 

Have you checked the alternator exciter wire?

 

Found it. Changed all of the wires and took the battery back to pepboys. DEAD CELL. Weird cause I took it and the alt. to Autozone and they said they were both fine. WTF I am losing respect for autozone and their capabilities. The battery was only 6 months old. Thanks for all of your input. Will be coming back to visit soon.

 

it was a joke

VD = Venerial Disease...
lol

you should mention to do voltage drop, circuit must be closed... meaning engine running, and in most cases load being put on charging system.

i see the OP, already solved the issue, but ill post this for others it may help..

to test power side... set DMM to VDC... if you have to set manually set to 20VDC... positive lead on alternator output terminal, negative lead on battery positive terminal... you will get a reading... like Ivan said, between .1-.5 V drop is what you are looking for....and you can test between any two points along the wire...

to test ground side... set DMM to VDC like before... postive lead on the area of the wire you want to test, negative lead on chassis or battery negative terminal...once again you can get a reading at any point along the length of the wire....same tolerance for voltage drop between .1v-.5v....

i usually will check the ground side first, since it tends to be more simple...

remember, you also want to check voltage drop reading at the terminal connector and post...sometimes on corroded terminals you may see adequate drop from wire terminal to wire terminal, but from post to post there is high voltage drop... the reason being corrosion between the wire terminal and post causes high resistance... high resistance = more voltage drop... voltage,resistance and current are all proportional to each other... as resistance goes up, requires more voltage to sustain the same current flow... if voltage stays constant, with higher resistance, the current flow will decrease...
which means if the alternator is outputting its normal amperage, but the line has excessive resistance, the alternator is going to bump up the voltage output in order to try to achieve the same current flow... depending on how high the resistance is, it may or may not be able to provide enough amperage in order to sufficiently charge the battery... thats why you see voltage regulators go out in alternators on a lot of systems where there is a lot of corrosion on terminals and high resistance in the charge system connections...electronics are meant to work within a specific range... when you subject them to conditions outside of that range they tend to fail quickly...

 

Do you have any pictures of these two grounds that you could post for me please?

I think i am missing these grounds.

Does the block to chassis ground attach to the block right between the back of the alternator and the motor mount?

Where does it attach on the chassis?

Thank you in advance for all of your help.

JD

 

Its right by the alt. The other groud is right above the starter.

 

So I am still seriously having this issue. So far two alts. one starter, batteries up the *** and just changed all of the cables and its still doing it... WTF could this be. I have been thinking it is maybe the idle its idling at about 650 at a stop and the volt gauge is about 10-12. When driving around it is at about 14. Any other suggestions?

 

is there an external voltage regulator? I think its internal to the alt, but just making sure. with the engine off, check the voltage at the fuse panel (power wire coming from the battery). this should tell you if you have a short somewhere.

which wires did you end up changing? why dont you disconnect your amp and see if that makes a difference too. that amp might be causing a big draw.

 

Dude seriously the diagnostic process I posted should determin if its a charging issue.

 

If everything checks out ok then your issue is not charging. You could have a parasitic draw that is sucking the juice from your battery while the car is at rest.