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O.T. 99 Escort battery light

I

IA Roy

Well-known Member
Several days ago the light came on the wife's car. She stopped at a local shop and he put the meter on it. Thought it might be the alternator. I took it off the car and to a parts house and they put it on their machine and it checked out. Last night I took the battery out of the car, put a charger on it for about 12 hours and took it to another store this noon. The hand held meter said it was ok. I left it with them to do a charge and load test on it. I will pick it up this evening. What is the next thing to test? The battery clamps are wrap around copper and are clean. Posts were cleaned after the first warning.
Thanks for the replies, Roy
 
Could be a number of things but that is also why an idiot light does nothing to help you trouble shoot a problem. If still the factory battery cables one of those maybe going bad or something else in the wiring. I prefer a good old amp gauge in the system that way you know what is really going on
 
Had the same issue with mine. You can do all you want, fix the alternator 5 times if you like. Problem is and ford won't and wouldn't admit it, the wires inside the alternator would short out just a little, till it blows the regulator. Put a new or used alternator on and light goes out. I found this out from a auto wrecker. Changed the alt. on his yard with his tools and never a problem after. It was the factory alt. not after market that did this.
 
There is a white wire with black tracer on it that comes out of the middle pin on the regulator plug and goes to the plug in on the side of the alternator. if that wire goes bad it will bring on the light even though the alternator is working fine. if you wiggle at that wire sometimes you can make the light blink on and off. just something else to check. hth jstpa
 
I had an alternator go out on my Jeep a couple years ago. It would charge until it got warmed up, then quit. Took the alternator off in a auto parts store parking lot and traded it in on a rebuilt. The clerk said the old one tested good....I asked him how long he ran it.
 

I took it off the car and to a parts house and they put it on their machine and it checked out.

I would have looked at the brushes and slip rings sounds like they are worn out... It would be a no brainier they come out the back you don't have to disassemble the alt see it all the time... Time to regroup and check the brushes...
 
Is everything else on the dash working normally?

Check the fuses for the "instrument cluster","gauges", any fuse related to the dash or instruments.
 
They did a different test on the battery this afternoon. Something about charging it up and then testing it. Supposedly it would take 40 minutes. So I left it until about 5:30. The results were that it was bad this time. I took it out for a drive after I installed it at home. Time will tell if that was the problem for sure.
Question? Why would they use a hand held tester if it didn't give reliable results. If it was really bad and they told me it was ok, it could have taken forever and a day to find out what the problem was unless it really died real soon!
Thanks, Roy
 
The alternator checkers will pass a bad alternator too.

Only time I've seen an alternator checker say an alternator was bad, the alternator actually broke the machine! Then it was not so much a matter of the machine saying it was bad; it was more of a foregone conclusion.
 
(quoted from post at 05:40:24 07/17/14) The alternator checkers will pass a bad alternator too.

Only time I've seen an alternator checker say an alternator was bad, the alternator actually broke the machine! Then it was not so much a matter of the machine saying it was bad; it was more of a foregone conclusion.
Click to expand...

Daughters ZX2(Escort) had issues like yours,but would work fine on lower rpms. I reved the engine while checking battery volts and at norman rpms it was about 14v and when rev it up the voltage would drop back to about 12v. Turns out it was v regulator in alternator but we put a new alt on.
 
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