03 Gt battery issues while driving

ThatBlack4.6

New Member
Feb 25, 2023
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So, been chasing battery/electrical issues for a darn year now. While driving, my battery light will randomly come on and off depending on throttle and rpm. I keep getting left stranded because battery will drain and car will die on me. Had to jumpstart 4 times to make it home from work today, around 70 mile trip.

Funny thing is, when it dies, I'll still have power to the dash and if I hook jumper cables to my battery, it has enough juice to spark when I tap em together. Car will die and require a jump start. I can try to push it and roll start it, but it doesn't work. When it dies, it doesn't have the juice to crank back and just clicks, sometimes not even that?

I should mention that the lights do dim and flicker, indicating the alternator is the culprit, which makes since because battery light comes on and off. Also, it tends to die under load, like lights on at night. It's always had an issue of dieing at red-lights or clutch in and stopping though. Could be unrelated.

Alternator was tested by advanced auto and checked good, new battery, replaced tensioner because it was bad and I assumed belt slip was the culprit. Just replaced the ground terminal and moved the grounds that were up by the expansion tank to the battery tray bolt.

Battery reads 12.06v or something while off and drops to 4v when cranking. This was recorded about 20 min after getting home from a 4 mile drive, would not start back. Alternator read 13.4 v or something when tested.

Any ideas? This is getting old lol. What fuses should I check? Where are the other grounds? Only other ground I seen was going to a little 2 wire plug thing down below the fuse block and going towards the bottom of the engine. Couldn't see where it actually ended up. I assume that'd be an engine ground? Would it be a good idea to run an entirely new engine ground from the battery? Could my belt itself be bad? How tight should it be? Maybe it's stretched from being old and slipping on alt pulley?
 
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Sounds like a bad battery and a weak alternator. Alternator should charge around upper 13-14.5v.
 
You should be getting 14.4V off the alternator just above idle.

Voltage regulators on these alts are culprits and problematic. Despite testing good, i wouldn't rule out a bad alt. It also tends to cause power drain issues when the car sits, which leads to weak batteries.

I would grab a DMM that can do 10amps DC for current and set it up on one of the battery leads. Close the door and walk away for 45mins to allow the GEM to go to sleep. How many milliamps of current do you read then?

SHould have around 120milliamps with the GEM active and 35 milliamps when it goes to sleep.