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Infiniti Alternator (charging) Question

I'm not familiar with Infiniti auto, so I'd like to ask the NG about the following. My wife had to have her 2000 Infiniti I30 jumped this afternoon in order to get home from work. I put a volt meter on the battery and it showed 12.5 VDC.

With the volt meter still attached to the battery, I started the engine. I was expecting to see the meter jump to somewhere between 13.5 and 14.5 VDC for a "normal" charging voltage, but the meter hardly moved off 12.5 VDC.

Am I right to assume either the regulator and/or the alternator are the problem? Or is there some kind of "warm up" period of several minutes before the charging system kicks in?

TIA for any tips, suggestions, comments,

Manjo

Reply to
manjo
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Unless you had a bunch of accessories on, the alt is indeed toast. It should be ~14.5V. Did you try to rev it up a bit? Insist on a Nissan replacement. The cheap chain autostore ones don't seem to live very long (though the lifetime warranty is great if you feel like replacing it every few months).

Reply to
JimV

This is a response to any and all persons who posted to this thread (Outlook did not post my original post to my NG reader).

I have a battery tester that gives VDC for the battery and the battery when the engine is running (charging). Lo and behold, the tester showed a steady

14.2 VDC from 1000 rpm up to 3500 rpm. As a result, this indicated the charging system WAS working (I have no idea why my volt meter was pegged at 12.6 VDC with the engine running). The regulator may still be flaky since the charging voltage was steady and didn't vary much, if at all, from the 14.2 VDC, but I don't know how to test the regulator alone (another group post gave me the info on testing the alternator which was much appreciated).

I went to Wally World and bought a new battery 24F-3N $39.95. I put it on the charger for 3 hours, and tested it with the battery tester under load. This showed a 600 CCA reading which is what the battery is rated at. I popped it in the car and started the car. This morning, the car started again, and the wife is off to work.

If the car does not start this afternoon, then we'll take the car into the shop to get the regulator tested.

My thanks to everyone for your help. I know a lot more about the car's charging system than I knew 24 hours ago.

Manjo

Reply to
manjo

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