On my way to work this morning my battery indicator came on and the gauge was reading about 11.5v. Its been constant at 14v ever since I added the red top optima. No change has been done other than I took the battery off the other day to help turn over a buddies truck to check if his battery was shot or if it was something else. Put the battery back on and made sure all was secure.

I just had Auto Zone check it out and both my battery and alt are giving good readings. The only feedback was to check the alt output wire. It's tight and doesn't seem to have anything wrong w/ it.

Truck starts up w/ no hesitation and drives normal. I can hear the difference in the idle but not by much.

Any suggestions on what it could be?


Thanks,

 

\./tunately, I hear over and over about AutoZone testing alternators and saying that they're good when they're bad...not saying that yours is bad, just saying.

You may have a corroded battery cable, very common, and sometimes the corrosion is on the inside and you can't see it. Visually inspect it first, and if you don't see anything, I'd check resistance in the cable from end to end. You can disconnect it at the battery and right at the little red box under the alt, connect your DMM probes at both ends and check resistance. A general rule of thumb is .5 ohm, but even with a couple of ohms your charging system should still charge above 12 volts. I'd be concerned if I saw more than 3 ohms, but still think that I had another problem...