On my 93 SC400, I noticed the a/c blower was not as strong over the last day, then today when I cranked it and drove about two miles, the battery light flickered and the car seemed to lose a little power. I took it to AutoZone and the battery read 0% charge. He hooked it up to the charger and in the mean time, put a new battery in to test the alternator, which passed.

I bought the car in April this year, the battery is a Toyota with a 12/09 sticker on it and the Feb indicator scratched off, leading me to believe the battery has been in the car for about six months, and it says it's a 60 month battery. After one cycle on their charger, it was at 63%, after a second cycle, it was at 84%.

 

Even though you don't have the paperwork, be confident, use a little bit of insistence and, if need be, a little fit of a strategic and theatrical temper tantrum in front of other customers can do wonders. They ARE in the business of customer service after all. Hopefully it won't come to that though. I would expect they will say that they need to verify your alternator and general electrical system is up to par though . . . that's only fair.

That being said, I am a little skeptical of your alternator and wiring myself. A bad electrical "environment" can kill the best of batteries in a fairly short time frame.

 

For a battery light to come on, I would think the alternator is going out. It seems it's an intermittent problem if AutoZone was able to test it and it came out okay. Did they load test the battery? That would tell you if you have a bad battery. Simply charging and checking the voltage can not tell you the full condition of the battery. At times, a dead cell in a battery would still give a good charge reading.

 

IDK, he hooked up the battery tester, the battery read 0% charge, so he couldn't test it, put it on the charger for a cycle and it only brought it up to 63%, put it on another charge cycle, up to 84%. With a charged battery (not mine) he hooked up the alt tester and it passed, was reading ~14 on the meter...

 

Power steering pumps going or on their way out is quite common, and when this happens it leaks fluid directly into the alternator.
I would check for fluid on the alternator , and around the pump.
First clue is usually a dead battery.
All V8's do this, I mean all ! if your hasn't yet it will.
It's just a thought and something to check anyway.

 

@surreal - the power steering pump was re-sealed by Lexus at some point, don't remember exactly when, but I checked the service history on lexus.com and it was done...

as an update, I took it this morning to Advanced Discount Auto as they have a different computer than seems to be a little more in depth. The battery tested fine and the alt output was ~13.2v with no load and ~12.3v with full load. He said it should be ~14.4v with no load and only drop about .1 with full load. He advised that the alt was not completely dead, but was on it's way...

Does this sound reasonable?

 

^^ yes, it does.

 

That's what I thought was going on. Usually a battery will not read 0% if the alternator is functioning properly. Seems the alternator quit charging and the entire electrical system of the car ran straight off the battery. Expect the voltage output to be even lower than 12.3 when it's heat soaked.

 

Thanks for the info...looks like I will be swapping out the alternator this week. It does appear to be an easy swap out (1/2 hour total), and only about $140 for a re-manufactured one, so not too bad...

 

ok, so getting ready to take the alt out and notice there is a leak of some sort as the alt and surrounding area is covered in something. the strange thing is, the power steering fluid and oil are both full and I have been driving the car daily for four months. for the first 2 1/2 months, there was what appeared to be a very small amount of oil leaking from somewhere, had a couple shops look at it and they couldn't tell where it was coming from and it was such a small amount, I was advised not to worry about it for now. The dipstick still reads full -- I haven't noticed any puddles under the car for the past six weeks.

I know it's a long shot, but does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

 

1st guess, it's just the usual suspect: PS leak

longshot: it's not just anti-freeze is it?

 

no, it's definitely an oily substance...

ps pump is another $200 from autozone. do you know if this is a difficult job? I am searching for diy links now, hopefully will come across something...

EDIT*

Adding a few pics I just took...there is some coolant in the area now as I had to remove the top part of the rad hose to get the alt out...I am not sure what these pics are of as I just stuck my hand in the area with my phone and snapped them--just wanted y'all to see what I was talking about.

 

Think I'm having the same issue's. Ps pump dripping on the alternator. Maybe replace seals and buy a new alternator. Might be to expensive to buy both.