Quote:
Originally Posted by shklog
So about a month ago, i started my car to be greeted by the lovely "increased battery discharge" warning, proceeded to let the car sit for a while and warm up. When i turned it off and the started it again, warning went away. Didn't really think anything of it. About a week later, it did it again, and then multiple other warnings came up (ABS, DSC, and many others) and then it killed itself at a stoplight. I hadn't replaced the battery since i purchased the car a little over a year ago, so i went ahead and did that and coded it through Carly. Everything has been running fairly good, except for the fact that when i monitor the voltage on the in dash tool, it will start off reading 11.8v and then once ive driven it a considerable amount, it will jump back up to around 13.5-14.5 V. I know that 13.5-14.5 is a very reasonable number, but should it take almost 30 minutes of driving to get to that point? Im also due for the positive battery cable recall, and am doing so next week. Just seeing if anyone else has had the same issue. If i let the car sit for even just a day, ill have weird issues like the headlights not coming on when i unlock the car and some instrument panels will clear themselves when i start the car. I feel like its alternator related, but then how could it eventually go back to normal voltage? Faulty Battery? I did pull codes and the 00278D "generator communication" code came up. Voltage regulator issue? IBS issue? Let me know your thoughts.
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It's most likely your alternator. Voltage should jump to ~14V within 10 sec after star up. This happened to me and several others here. My alternator had a cracked bearing housing so the whole thing was toast. At first it would take a while to kick in and increase voltage. Then it got to the point where it would only kick in after a restart. Then that stopped working and the alternator never generated a field. I replaced mine myself and would suggest replacing the alternator (plus regulator) rather than trying to replace just the regulator itself.