I’m having an intermittent charging/discharging problem.
’91 780 w. B230FT I am now on my fourth battery, second alternator and third set of voltage regulator/brushes within 10 months!
Symptoms: Everything is fine except about once a week I’ll have a dead battery. I jumpstart it and it’s ok again for a few days. After a few rounds of deep cycling, the battery will refuse to take a charge, and I trade it in for a new one (18 month replacement guarantee).
Now for the details:
Parasitic draw is 30mA (I understand that anything below about 90mA is ok)
The alternator light lights up then goes out while running.
The voltmeter reads 14.7 volts while running.
I hooked up an ammeter, which shows 20A discharge while running!
The auto parts store ran a load test on the alternator and it checked out as good.
I’ve been through the troubleshooting section in the archives – everything checks out ok.
It seems as though I have a huge draw on the system while running, though I don’t know how to track that down.
Any and all suggestions or ideas on trouble-shooting will be appreciated.
TR Conn