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Re: Battery/Warning Light Posted by pme [Email] (#1496) [Profile/Gallery] (more from pme) on Fri, 7 Feb 2014 07:14:02 In Reply to: Battery/Warning Light, Stephen, Fri, 7 Feb 2014 06:17:29 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
I may be wrong, but the battery light is intended to indicate a problem with charging or state of charge. Mine has come on in a couple of cases:
(1) while driving at highway speed, followed quickly by nearly every dash indicator light coming on and the car going into limp-home mode. This turned out to be the alternator failing, and once the battery reached a critical level of discharge, the above happened. A reman Bosch alternator took care of that.
(2) a few years later, I was getting long cranks to start and then would drive to work (35 min ride at highway speed). No issues there, but if I was out around town, doing errands with short local drive between starts, I would (after the first couple) get the battery light sporadically for a few seconds after each start. This was a clue that the short trips were not giving the alternator enough time to recharge the battery after the repeated long cranks. Battery tested fine (albeit they noted it wasn't at full capacity, Alternator tested fine. Tech was suspicious of the positive battery cable -- didn't like the looks of the corrosion near the lug at the alternator, and did a voltage drop test. Cable was very bad, and he theorized that the state of the cable was an impediment to getting the battery fully charged, and this was exacerbated by short trips not giving the weakened cable a chance to get charge back to the battery with any efficiency at all.
Changed the cable a year ago, still on same alternator and battery. Car started and ran like a new car. Based on your car's age and mileage, if you haven't looked into the cable, you should. Mine is a 2003 9-5 Arc (also a V6) with 211K miles on it now. I did the cable last Jan at 188K)
pme
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