Voltage too high
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Voltage too high
I was coming home from a job today and the battery light came on, I expected it to be a loose wire or something causing a low power problem, but I looked at the gauge and it was pinned at 18v. I turned on my floodlights and every other accessory and it brought it back down to about 15v (according to the dash gauge) for the rest of the way home. I pulled out my multimeter and checked the battery when it was off. it was back down to around 13v. I started the truck with no accessories on and it pretty quickly climbed back up to 18v when idling, and jumped up past 18v close to 19v when giving it some gas. I did a quick visual inspection of the wires and nothing seems to stand out so I was thinking it could be the alternator's internal voltage regulator going bad, but I thought I'd see if anyone else had a similar problem.
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Joined: Jun 2010
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From: Denver
It has to be a bad regulator. Did you measure voltage across the posts or across the battery terminals? If one or both of the battery posts are corroded then there's a slight possibility that alternator current can't get to the battery which might show max voltage on the dash voltmeter, but if the truck is cranking OK, it's unlikely.
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Yeah I measured at the battery posts, When I turned the engine off I could watch the battery voltage slowly drop back to normal. I'm gonna pull the alternator go get a new one today. Thanks for the response.
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