Alternator Fault - Battery not being charged.

[lukehudson991]

Hi everyone,
Please bear with me this is my first post on the forum and I do not know a lot about the ins and outs of cars.
Here is my problem, a few months ago my car would randomly die with no warning - it wouldn't tell me my battery is low and to charge it.
What would happen is randomly, I will get a warning light on the dash, something along the lines of 'alternator fault: battery not being charged'. and the electrics slowly start turning themselves off, radio etc. When I stop and turn the car off the battery is 'dead' and needs a jumpstart, upon jumpstarting the car fires back into life (as expected) and only after this do I get a warning saying something like 'battery is low: please recharge'. The strange thing is once it is jump started, I can more or less turn the car off straight away and it will start no problem. How is this the case, if my battery is 'dead' can it start up without having to recharge?

I brought it to one mechanic and he replaced the battery, a month later it happened again. I then brought it back to the same mechanic and he said it is something to do with the battery terminal at the front of the car and he has bypassed the signal going to this terminal. A month later it happened again. He said with the bypass it should fix the problem, it shouldn't only work intermittenly, so he replaced the battery terminal, a month later it happened again.

It has now happened twice in the past week and there are no tell tale signs of when it is going to happen until the alternator fault comes on the dash but by that point its too late. On top of it happening twice in the past week, another thing happened - I was driving and all of the electrics shut off - radio, windows, speedometer, dashboard - everything. Lots of warning lights were on the dash, so I assumed it was going to die. I pulled over turned the car off and turned it on straight away again and it started with the electrics all back to normal?

Over the past week the car has brought up random faults that I have never got mid way through a joruney, when I get to my destination and I am on the return joruney the warning lights that were on are gone.
A few examples of these lights include: Glow plug warning light flashing, something on the centre dash saying 'Brake warning: bring to your nearest garage' (but the brakes were working fine) and a few other faults but they do not cause me any problems as they go away once the car is restarted.

I am just wondering if anyone has had any similar experiences? As I have only had the car for just over a year and have already spent in excess of £1400 on problem after problem and the car only cost me £3350, so I want to get a rough idea on what the problem is before I spend anymore money on it because if it is another expensive repair, I think I am better of getting a new car.

Thanks for reading and look forward to reading your replies.

[S-Liner]

Has your mechanic ruled out the alternator pulley? Those one-way bearings go bad and when they fail, you get the “battery not charging fault”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[RPMtech147]

You have 2, well, 3 options.

1.)Keep driving the car until the issue is a hard fault, IE battery light stays on, and keep getting stuck on the side of the road. It's hard to diagnose an issue that's intermittent.

2.)Pay or DIY tear into the electrical system (Starting/charging) and check for loose grounds, bad wires, etc.

or

3.) Throw an alternator at it which has a good chance of fixing the issue. It sounds like the alternator is crapping out.