Garrant

my 1990 300zx non turbo has recently had a new altenator put in with a new battery, but still has a charging system malfunction, I will charge the battery it will drive for a few hours then show signs of the battery dieing until it does. my battery charger has an altenator test on it and it comes up with a "bad altenator" code. does anyone have any ideas.?

thezman

yeah its called you got a bad alternator from the parts house. It isn't at all uncommon. I buy mine from the OEM dealer whenever possible if your nissan dealer can't get you one make the parts house put your alternator on their testing machine before you buy it. i've seen up to 2 bad ones off the shelf before they picked up one that actually worked correctly.

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Towing broke down cars since 1999. Including primary for local Nissan, chevy, kia, Honda, dealerships.

machine23

OR, check to make sure all your ground connections are ok. i happen to work at a parts store; kragen auto. anyway just make sure its connected properly on the alternator's hot connection. and check the connection from the battery's negative cable. and make sure the alternator belt is how it should be; not too tight, it can screw up your bearing. and not too loose, the belt will slip around the pulley and it wont produce the energy the battery needs to charge. if you happen to own a multimeter or other sort of electrical tester, just put the range selector to 12v dc and put the proper color-coded probes on your battery terminals while the car is running. that will tell you if its actually screwed up. if its between 13.5 and 15v its ok. anything less, test it from the alternator itself. if theres a defference in voltage between the alternator and the battery then you have a bad connection somewhere. if you happened to get it from a kragen (), it should be covered by the warranty. just a quick swap out.