Is It Charging???or Not???

[GS'sRULE]

Hey guys,

Maybe someone can help me...I am in need of taking the lark in for a diagnostic test on the charging system if I can't figure out what is going on with this thing.

My problem is I replaced the alternator twice, fried the first one hooking up the red posi wire to the alternator ground stud..OOPS. Fried the wire too...So I replaced the wire, the alternator, the battery, voltage regulartor twice, and the darn battery keeps getting drained on me all the way to dead...Usually when I run the lights and wipers...I don't know what else it could be unless I have something wrong inside the wires...in fuse block or something...NOT QUITE SURE....I took a dead battery, jumped it off, ran the car for days on it without the lights being used, and never had a problem starting it...Cranked everytime. Run the lights and wipers for 45 minutes, get home battery dead as a doornail!!!! Weird I know...The guy at the local parts store put it on his"Notorious MACHINE" and He said my battery was shot beyond repair, so I bought a new one with 900 CCA and got same results....PLEASE HELP IF YOU KNOW WHAT COULD BE GOING ON WITH THE GS....THANKS!

[rh455]

Chad

I'm no electrical genius here, but sounds like you've got a serious drain somewhere. An old friend of mine that was a line tech at a Buick/Olds dealer told me that he would put a new battery in and in a few minutes he would go to every electrical part on the car and touch it. "If it can drain a battery quickly, then it's got a lot of juice going to it and it's going to be warm to hot".

[rh455]

You mentioned the lights and wipers. Did you check the ground on the switches for each in the dash? Each has a ground that attaches to the switch. In the picture below, the wiper switch ground is hanging. It attaches to the switch bracket.

[65specialconver]

hey chad,like the tail light pod?what you have to do is pull the fuses ono by one,and see where the drain is coming from.when you pull the pos cable is there a spark?is it a 6volt,pos ground system?what size pully on the alt/gen could be not driving the rpm's enough to get the battery charged.:bglasses:

[baking]

Does the battery drain if the car just sits, or does it only drain when it's running? If it drains sitting you have short, if it drains running you could have a short but also the charging system is not working. When the car's running you should have around 13.5 -14.5 volts at the battery if it's charging. I recently had an alternator and voltage regulator go South. I replaced them and the charging system still wasn't working. It turned out I had bent one of the spade connectors on the voltage regulator and it wasn't going into the connector properly. Didn't see it until I finally put a bright light under there and pulled the harness off.

:Dou:

Don't forget the obvious/easy stuff, like make sure your battery cable connections are clean and tight. I also replaced the 33 year old alternator connector with a new one. The old one crumbled in my hands when I removed it.