Well I spent the last 2 hours searching and found a few threads that have my symptoms, but all of their fixes are ones I've tried. Well here is the scoop with my car...

I get it running again after installing a new reman starter, brand new CAS, and a brand new upstream o2 sensor, and then I started having problems with my electrical system. The car will crank, and start up fine, and soon as it starts up, my oil pressure light and CEL come on. The CEL is from my EGR being removed, but not sure what other codes it is throwing since I can't seem to keep my car running long enough to get it to advance to run the codes (and they won't let you take it home, because too many dumbasses in town keep breaking it...running it over, busting pins etc). After my car is running for about a minute or 2, the battery light comes on, but yet the car still runs fine (for a limited time).

I drive around town, with my buddy who has an F-150 following me incase I need a tow or something, to see if I can come up with some troubleshooting, and after driving around for around 30 mins on a fully charged battery, my car begins to chug, my acceleration is sluggish, my SRS light comes on and then my tach goes out, my radio cuts out and flickers uncontrollably, my speedometer stops working, my 4-ways blink right then left, my brakes illuminate right then left and then my car chugs it's way to the point where the engine kills itself...then won't even crank over.

I had a similar problem the other day, so i replaced the alternator with a reman one today and got a brand new wal-mart battery. Still same problem. Checked in my console for loose wires around the turn signal control...none. Replaced my wire nuts used to splice my underglow (that has not been hooked up to the battery at all when this is happening) with splicing insulators, pulled fuses under my steering wheel (found my turn signal fuse blown beyond belief...the last dumbass that worked on it overloaded the socket...15A fuse in a 10A socket), pulled my fuses in the engine bay (found nothing) and meanwhile my starter won't even crank anymore.

I got to talking with my neighbor and my buddy and we've come up with a small list of possibilities.

1) Faulty alternator? (possible...)
2) Missing ground (only know of three...intake, starter and the chassis ground going to the battery...there more?)
3) Bare wires hitting somewhere? (no luck finding any though)
4) Short in the wiring harness somewhere...

With my symptoms, what else besides the above 4 could it possibly be? We are going to take the alternator back tomorrow and have it tested at advance and maybe get another (since it has a lifetime warrenty) and see if that fixes it...and if it does, we know the alternator i got was faulty. But in the event that it isn't, what else could it be?

-Ben
Black 1999 RS

Basic mods and a South Bend OFE-SS Clutch
~150bhp.....for now!

Faulty alternator. Every symptom you describe (especially the battery light being on) is a sign of a failing alternator.

Don't reply and tell me how new it is. it isn't. it's a reman, and they're always full of problems. Return it, get your money back, and buy a *new* alternator.

______________________________
If a sentence found online has 35% misspellings or greater and includes at least two racially charged expletives, chances are it is a YouTube comment.

'95 Eclipse TurboGS (garage deco)
'95 TSi AWD (restoring a survivor)
'97 Talon ESi-T (poor impulse control)
'99 Eclipse RS-T (daily beater)
'13 Evo X (mostly stock)
'17 Sienna (Middle Aged Dad Mobile)



Factory Service Manuals: http://nawdu.de/files/

-MIKE-

Stroked 2.2L

That is what we were thinking but we weren't for sure. I'll rip the SOB off and take it back and get a different one. Thanks for the quick reply, appreciate it.

Just for kicks I bought a DMM today and tested my battery cable-to-post current and it was reading around 21.4 mA...that normal? It jumped around for a little bit, but then leveled out. I'm just trying to learn a little more about that aspect now. Will replace my alt and see if that helps. Thanks Dino.

-Ben
Black 1999 RS

Basic mods and a South Bend OFE-SS Clutch
~150bhp.....for now!

Well.....I tested my alternator at advance and the thing was only putting out 8V, so it was toast. I get another one and have it tested before I leave the store and it's output was 15.5V so I'm good to go. Well I get home, install it and then start up my beast. At first I was good...no warning lights except for my CEL. I go inside and look for the keys for another car for 5 minutes, come back out, and my oil pressure light is on. Go back inside, car is still running, and come back out 10 minutes later and my battery light is dim...but on. The engine killed itself, so I leave to go pick up my mother from work, and come back, start my car up, 2 minutes later oil pressure light/battery light come on. Get out my multimeter i bought today, and run a voltage test on my battery...initially 9.4V running and going down .04-.06V per second. Check my chassis ground from the battery to the strut tower and have a constant draw of .01 or .02V. Look at the wires and find out half of them are all frayed out and just chilling out there. So, now I'm going to take that chassis ground off, solder the frayed wires and try it again. Will let you know what I find.

-Ben
Black 1999 RS

Basic mods and a South Bend OFE-SS Clutch
~150bhp.....for now!

I contributed to the Wiki.

I found a new problem that might have caused all this, but I'm not for sure. Last night, installed new alternator, soldered the ground wires up in that area and still was having a draw. So my buddy and I went to work on trying to find bad wires etc. We put the DMM on the continuity buzzer setting and tested current on the white wires that come off the positive terminal harness and there was a current leak on only one of them. We traced that wire back to the 60A fusible link in the fuse panel and was getting a tone, but soon as we tried the other wire to that location or even the 120A Alt choke, we got nothing. Took the fuse out, inspected it and it was fine, so we think it may have been loose. Put it back in and securely tightened it down, and the current draw went away. So instead of .04-.06V/second loss, it's down to .01V/6-8 seconds and the alternator isn't charging at full potential. Is it possible that fuse being loose or jarred a bit spiked my alternators? The problem has been there since the first one croaked, so I'm thinking a voltage spike burnt up this new alt as well. Tried the old start the car up and pull the positive cable trick and every time it died. Soon as I can get my garage cleaned out a bit tonight, I'm gonna pull it in there and see if I can test it. I know it's a reman and a lot of people suggest getting a brand new one, but in interest of money and absence of transporation, I am trying to save some money. The guys at advance said it they keep blowing, keep bringing them back for unlimited exchange, so that's what I'm doing. Will keep posting when i find something out.

-Ben
Black 1999 RS

Basic mods and a South Bend OFE-SS Clutch
~150bhp.....for now!

______________________________
If a sentence found online has 35% misspellings or greater and includes at least two racially charged expletives, chances are it is a YouTube comment.

'95 Eclipse TurboGS (garage deco)
'95 TSi AWD (restoring a survivor)
'97 Talon ESi-T (poor impulse control)
'99 Eclipse RS-T (daily beater)
'13 Evo X (mostly stock)
'17 Sienna (Middle Aged Dad Mobile)



Factory Service Manuals: http://nawdu.de/files/

Ok spent the last 21 hours straight trying to fix the problem. Found mud and shit caked all over the plugs under the ECU that run to the grounds over in that area so we cleaned them, checked the headlights and found a jump in circuit there and redid a few things and got rid of that problem, replaced the alt...AGAIN, hooked everything back up and ran it to advance before my battery died yet again to run the codes. These are the ones I got. We used the new pocket actron so the codes are a little vague. I liked the other one they had, because at least you could tell exactly which one is throwing what and get a print out. You can't with their new one...


3 Main Codes

P0113 - IAT Sensor Circuit High Voltage Input
P0123 - TPS/Pedal Stuck High Voltage Input (for some reason, when my car was idling up on jack stands, the front wheels would move briefly for about 5-10 seconds intermittently on their own...clutch stuck causing this code to be thrown?)
P0403 - EGR Solenoid Circuit (I went ahead and blocked it off and routed the valve vacuum hose back to the valve itself and crimped off my tubing)

Monitors (did not give code numbers...just a brief description like below)

MIL OFF
02 Sensor (did not say which one...I'm assuming the downstream since it hasn't been replaced)
02 Heater (no idea what this is..downstream 02?)
Misfire (did not specify)
EVAP (not sure what this is telling me)
Fuel (did not specify again...so I have no idea. is this telling me I'm running too rich?)
Compression (related to the misfire/fuel codes?)

As you can see, this scan tool is a POS. Wish they had the old one back, it was more descriptive. Any idea what some of these unknown codes were telling me? And the IAT/TPS voltage being too high, I'm assuming those two are toast, so could that be where my .01V every 5-10 sec is going? The funny thing is, it never mentioned the charging system voltage being out of whack, but yet my dash dummy light says either my battery is low or my charging system is fubared...hmm. I'm probably going to call a shop referred to me here in town and see how much they would charge to do an electrical diagnosis and tell me what is wrong. Not sure though, money is kind of tight.

-Ben
Black 1999 RS

Basic mods and a South Bend OFE-SS Clutch
~150bhp.....for now!