After the recent snow storm with almost 2ft cover my 1998 SC300, it wouldn't start. I jumped the battery but the car died 1/2 hr later. So i replaced the battery. No light coming on when idle but when i start pushing the gas pedal, the battery light comes on. If I floor it, the light is flickering. It is off when the car is back to idle. The ABS light comes on intermittently. Could it be the alt going bad? Thanks in advance for your help.

 

I had this problem too... and yes, it was the alternator. My alt crapped out because PS fluid soaked it though, so I knew it was coming. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the battery light coming on is ONLY battery or alternator.

 

Same thing happened to me, but the alternator actually STARTED WORKING after it was cleaned with some brake cleaner. It was pretty miraculous. It just started working and charging at 14 Volts. Nice.

So go with that if you think it's power steering fluid.

 

wow that is miraculous. wish i would've known that before i replaced mine. oh well!

 

Maybe it's your crank pulley separating. It will eventually get worse and eventually overheat and all that from separating completely... check it out. At idle, it spins slow enough to be able to catch/spin the alternator. This happened to me last year... just a thought.

 

Thanks for all the replies. But my alt was completely dry so i don't think PS fluid is the culprit. The crank pulley makes sense. I'll check it out.
CP_Ree, did you experience anything else beside the batt light coming on?

 

Bad alt. just replaced mine for the same reason.

 

Any advice or suggestion on a replacement brand, place to shop? I'm temping to do it myself since this is a fairly simple job. Thanks.

 

While you're checking pulleys you might as well take a look at your tensioner pulley. I had an issue with my seizing up yesterday. The bearings were shot causing the pulley dramatically slow down the belt system until the car would eventually die at idle. I had to replace the entire assembly in order to correct the problem because the replacement pulley from Autozone would not work with the stock tensioner arm. Pop your belt off and make sure its spinning freely and not seized up. Just a thought. Good luck.

 

you're going to want a denso alternator.

 

x2. My crank pulley actually separated into two peices and wasn't catching the alternator at all unless it was at idle. It also made it so everytime I would have more than one or two electronic things running in my car (i.e. heat, radio, HIDs, etc) everything would dim and my headlights would blink like a strobe light sometimes when I hit the brakes. My SC STILL does this and has it's little temper tantrums every once in a while but not as much ever since I replaced the serpentine belt/crank pulley/belt tensioner. The next thing I am going to do is replace my alternator. I've heard a million things about the alternators on our cars, but for some reason they need to be replaced more than often. I heard about some kind of fluid leaking on it that could be causing it because of the location of the alternator on the 2JZ specifically, not sure of the fluid, or why it would be leaking, probably because of the age of these cars, but yeah, the alternator is the next thing I am replacing. If it still does the stuff I said above then I'm all out of ideas.

 

I was kind of wondering the same thing, I want to go aftermarket most likely when I replace my alternator too. I was looking around online and there are some alternators for like $200 shipped that have 200 volts/amps or whatever. I wonder if that is enough juice/power for my SC, I don't have many mods for electronics in my car, but I would like to get it all running strong electronically because the rest of the car runs great. It's just when it comes to electronics in my car, that is it's weakness. I don't know too much about alternators or batteries but I know my battery I have right now is a 650 cranking amps and 540 cold cranking amps. Any help is good.

 

you clean it out with brake fliud or brake kleener?

 

Whoops. I meant brake cleaner.

 

Took the alt to advance autopart to day to test. Alt was bad. i replaced it. So far, everything looks good. No light coming on. Hop it will stay that way