alternator problem????

[will_oh]

autozone, napa, and o'rilley all say my batt and alt are both good all my wires are tight. my terminals are good and clean. the truck is giving me the battery not charging message on the dash as soon as i start it and the gauge is at 11v, i will rev it to 5k and the gauge will raise to 14 and it will run fine. this will go on for about 3 starts and on the 4th start it wont come up and i will drive for about 10 min then lose my gauges, 5 more min and i lose all lights, 2 more and the truck turns off. after that it will start with a jump ill charge the batt on a charger and same series of events. it did this to me last month i took the charging system apart got it tested put it back together and it ran fine till 4 days ago. so i took it apart again and put it together again and it ran fine till yesterday. took it all apart today again got it all tested again(ok) put it back together again but no fix. someone please help me?

[kerrige]

Are you using OEM cables for all of this and do they appear to all be in good condition? I know you said the terminals are good but what about the entire cable. Also might be a short somewhere. I know a lot of guys prefer to change out their OEM battery cables for thicker gauge stuff. I doubt all of the parts stores are getting bad readings on your alt/battery. Got to be somewhere else that is causing the issue.

[will_oh]

oem (-) cables the ends look good but who knows under the plastic, larger (+) cables that are 4 months old

[AFSP1211]

Mine was doing something similar, just not as extreme. Turns out my (-) cable had started corroding at a bend and when the exposed wire would get wet, it would start acting up. Wire was extra long so I cut it and replaced the connector. Trace your wires and see if that's the culprit.

[Duct_tape123]

Had a similar issue yesterday on my buddy's yukon. His would charge for a little bit then all the idiot lights would light up on the dash and the gauge would drop down to the 12v tick, and eventually all the way to 9v. How do the windings look on the alternator? We replaced the alternator and all is well. His windings were very dark and the case had very dark spots near the front vents.

[will_oh]

Had a similar issue yesterday on my buddy's yukon. His would charge for a little bit then all the idiot lights would light up on the dash and the gauge would drop down to the 12v tick, and eventually all the way to 9v. How do the windings look on the alternator? We replaced the alternator and all is well. His windings were very dark and the case had very dark spots near the front vents.

thats how mine looks but it keeps testing good

[Duct_tape123]

It obviously sounds like the alternator is bad. Replace it and see if it fixes your problem.

[kerrige]

It obviously sounds like the alternator is bad. Replace it and see if it fixes your problem.

If your going to replace it as a guess and check your prolly best off upgrading it to something more efficient/powerful so if it doesn't fix it at least your going to be improving charging performance.

[Duct_tape123]

You can always return parts to vatozone and play dumb.

[will_oh]

well i am a broke a$$ so the upgrade for $220 wasn't going to happen. i ended up swaping with one off my 2002 v6 (turns out its the same one, i didn't know) it fixed the problem. so went to advance and got the cheap one $89 not to bad. thank you everybody who gave their $.02 it really helped out, i love ls1truck.com.