gsean400

For almost 7 months now, iv had a problem with my charging system. After putting a 12 in my decklid, I used it for about 3-4 months with no problems. Then one day I was sitting in a parking lot playing my music full blast, and I got the battery light and my navi shut off. And the only time I would have the problem is when I played the music full blast in park. I thought it was my alternator so I immediatly took it to autozone to get it checked, they said the alternator is bad. The next day I took the alternator out and had it rebuilt. I'm not much of as a bass head as I was in my teen days so I took my system out. Once I had put the alternator back in I didn't have a system to draw power from alternator so it ran just like it did when I had a so called "bad alternator" so no problems. I did notice a few days later when I left the light on in the car for a few minutes just to eat, when I turned it on the car was cranking really slow like the battery was drained. I went back to autozone, got the alternator tested and was told again the alt was reading low volts. I looked further into this and saw that I had a small power steering leak and it was leaking on the alternator. Now convinced it is the alternator that is half shorted from it being soaked in PS fluid, I was looking at replacing both the PS pump and the alternator once again. But then not to long ago I found a thread on here about our alternator voltages. I read that our cars voltage are naturally low at idle and need to have lights on, AC ect to read normal. I went to a different autozone and got the alternator re tested with AC on and my headlights. The guy checks it and says "it's good man". I told him what my problem was and he thinks something is drawing voltage from the car when it's off or in the acc position. Then another thing phased me. I also noticed my idle in drive was a tad low. And was thinking, could that have been the problem when I had my system in? the idle was low and when playing music the amp would pull power from the ALT at low idle.

With the description above does anyone know where I should start befor I start replacing everything?

My battery is fairly new,
The amp was a alpine MRP1000
Speaker was a 2011 fosgate T1.


I want to put a new system in with a t2 12" and a t1000 amp with a big 3 upgrade but this is holding me back. Or I could just leave it stock like it is now and not have to worry about slow cranking or the battery light coming on when at a stop.