Belt Auction

Electrical or Alternator??

I was driving on the interstate, my lights went dim and my car died, replaced the battery and 3 days later car is dead again, went to discount auto parts had them check the alternator they said my alternator was fine, I have a 2000 Honda Civic LX. I was involved in a car accident less than 2 weeks ago and was hit on my drivers side where my door opens and she cracked my wheel cover, I have not had any problems with my car till now...so is it electrical??? or the alternator.....I got prices to get my alternator fixed: Tire Plus: 350 Honda Dealer: 450 PLEASE HELP!!! my car has not been fixed yet...still waiting on insurance check... the battery is on the passenger side, i was hit on the drivers side..does that make a difference? when the battery is charged i can start my car...when i idle the car dies but when running it wont die, 2 days ago...when i got my car to start..i drove it down the street and none of my gauges worked...the rpms or the odomiter.

Public Comments

1. Could be a chaffed or pinched wire from the accident which is drawing current from your electrical system. if your alt. was checked its very likely NOT the problem.
2. A lot of auto stores, like Advance and Pep Boys, will test your alternator for free. If you have an volt meter, a quick test is to put it across the battery with the car off. The voltage should be around 12 Volts DC. Leave it connected, and watch the meter leads aren't somewhere they will get caught in a moving part (like fan or engine belts and pullies), then start the car. The meter reading should increase to something in the range of 13 or 13.5 Volts. If the reading does not increase, your charging system is at fault. Make sure the alternator belt isn't slipping, especially when the electrical system is loaded up (headlights on). Good luck!
3. Have the charging system checked they will do this for free at most auto parts store then go from there , you may have a faulty ground somewhere that they did not find at the time it was repaired, hope this helps.
4. It sounds like the alternator is bad but, if you tested it fine then I would look for bad connections or ground faults. However, since you had an accident and the car was hit in a critical spot, A wire may be pinched or cut... Good luck!
5. Could be simple as the battery cables or the connections at each end. Check them carfully. A bad ground can drive you nuts till you find it. keep after it and good luck.
6. If the alternator checked out fine, then the problem is that the battery is not charging. The reason it keeps dying is that you are running off of battery power, and not power generated by the alternator. It works like this: when you start your car, the battery is the power source for the starter. As soon as the car is running, a relay will switch over to the alternator, which then provides all of the electrical power in addition to charging the battery. At that point, the battery is getting recharged, and not used as a source of power. If this relay mechanism (it might be a bit more complicated than just a relay) is faulty, then you will constantly run on battery power. Don't go to a honda dealer, they'll charge you more than double what it should take to fix this. Any decent local mechanic will be able to find this, it's not a difficult problem. I'm betting the relay or a contact was jarred loose during the impact, but that's just a cyber-diagnosis and I could be completely wrong. Worst case will be, as one person wrote, a pinch in the wiring harness. This isn't a difficult problem to diagnose, but actually fixing it could be time consuming and expensive, as you need to find exactly where the pinch is. Labor ain't cheap.
7. Keep in mind that you may have to have the alternator a second time at a different place, preferably by an experienced professional, not a pimply faced kid with 20 minutes of training on a tester. I'm inclined to think there is a pinched or chaffed wire somewhere either preventing the alternator from charging the battery or causing a phantom drain on your battery causing it to discharge.