[Vwdiesel] Cont'd Electrical gremlins - bad ground?

[Harmon Seaver]

On Fri, Nov 08, 2002 at 06:00:15AM -0800, mark drillock wrote:
> You better get a new volt meter or something. Alternators in VWs have
> 14v regulators. 13.9v while charging is fine. 12.5v across the battery
> terminals is typical with everything turned off.


   There's nothing a all wrong with my voltmeter. 12.5v is minimum for a "12v"
battery. Fully charged it should be more. And you may be right about VW car
regulators being only 14v, but I know many others are higher, and 14v is rather
minimal. Any lead-acid cell is 1.2v at full charge. 12 of them gives you 14.4v
and you have to have a charging rate *higher* than the fully charged voltage of
a battery in order to charge it -- that is, a 13v charge rate won't fully charge
a so-called "12v" battery.
   I don't have a voltmeter in my '82 vanagon (haven't had it long enough to get
around to that), but I know my toyota 4x4 runs a good 16v charge rate.

>
> Mark
>
>
> > >
> > >   It almost sounds like a light may be getting left on or something else is
> > > draining the battery. If you are getting 13.9 V while it's running, and the
> > > battery is indeed good, it should maintain a charge overnight. On the other
> > > hand, almost 12 volts when not running isn't that bad, so you may have some
> > > other problem.
> >
> >    "almost 12" is a dead battery. In fact, 12v is a dead battery. A good battery
> > will read a minimum of 12.5v, but should read 13.5 when fully charged. And I'd
> > be suspicious at only getting 13.9v charging -- I usually see 15-16v with most
> > cars. I've had defective alternators that only put out about 13v.
> >
> >
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--
Harmon Seaver
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