So I've had the car up and running about a week and this is the first time this has happened. I was on the freeway headed to my parents house and notice the battery light blinking almost to the beat. This goes on roughly 10 minutes and I get to my parents house and pop the hood.

Basic inspection shows all is good...no corrosion on the battery, the fittings are nice and snug, belt tension checks out, the ground on the alternator is snug as is the plug in the back of it. Google time.

I find that this is fairly common on the sc300 (you can imagine my surprise). Further searching and reading old cl threads leads me to the causes: crank pulley separating, tensioner pulley seizing,, distributor o ring leak and power steering leaks dripping down and killing the alternator...well the crank pulley and tensioner pulley are new and spin quite freely, the dist o ring was replaced prior to this alternator going on and I replaced the ps pump and steering rack.

The alternator is clean with no signs of anything dropping on it and the only thing I noticed is the ground looks like it may have some rust. Well it's now 28 and dark and I'm done messing with stuff in my parents driveway. Car starts right up with no battery light and I drive home using the city streets as I read a lot of the battery light seizures take place on the freeway. The whole way home no light flashing at all. Since I figured speed or rpm is probably the reason this happens on the freeway, I decide to spiritedly drive the speed limit next to a riced out v6 mustang and still no battery light.

Now due to the crank pulley issue, the car sat for roughly a month and a half in the Utah cold which may have weakened the battery

Two questions
1 am I missing anything I should check?
2 what do you guys think the chances of the battery, or alternator preparing to give up the ghost are?

 

Sooo...anyone? I found the old stock 20 year old alternator in all of its covered in oil/gunk glory. Maybe between the 2 I can make it until a new one is shipped

 

Also anyone know why a voltage regulator would fail? The alt is roughly 17 months old and was a rebuilt oem. Bad rebuild? The 20 year old alternator it replaced was still working when I pulled it.

 

How old is your battery? Older batteries don't like to sit for long periods of time.

 

On most cars that light is a faulty charging system. Could be battery, alternator etc... Get a voltmeter and test the charge with the car on. Should be in the 14v range iirc. Sometimes it gets a surge of current and burns out the regulator. The battery is what essentially stabilizes the current. If your battery is going bad it could have that effect. But check volts at idle and underload!

 

Alternator is a wear item much like brake pads and should be changed as a precaution, I rebuild alternators on every used car I get and have never had one fail on me.

These alternators are very easy to rebuild if you are so inclined.

 

well I have 2 to practice with...amazon shipped this cars third alternator today. My main question is what could have changed tha would have killed the voltage regulator in this alt, but allowed the stock one to work perfectly up to when I pulled it?

 

Sub standard parts as made in china crap with low quality control^^^