Electrical Problems?

[Hiok-Tiaq Ng <htng@aries.ece.cmu.edu>]

Today, my coupe GT exhausted its battery. It could either
be that my battery is bad or my charging system is shot.
I have not used the car for 5 days and then a cold spell
struck Pittsburgh (-1F and that's not with wind chill) and when 
I did start the car without trouble, the engine sounded shitty,
but was OK after the few minutes that it took to warm up, and
I noticed that my voltmeter read around 10 volts. After
a while it shot to its usual 13.5V .

Previous to the cold spell, evrything was working great. No
problems at all.

Later that night it did the same but became normal but just before I 
reached home,it acted up again. Today, I used the car after checking the
belts, but everything seemed to be cranking along just fine. Looked
at the battery terminals, contact was good. Looked at the alternator 
terminals, it was OK.  But it refused to charge up and I was lucky to 
get it home after the battery totally died on me. The voltmeter was
reading less than 8V (where the needle usually rests when off)!!!

So, since the battery died on me, but the car kept running, albeit 
a little rough, can I even hope that the alternator is still putting out
juice? Right now it is too cold to be doing any trouble shooting,
but I was wondering if anyone experienced this before? Your
comments would be welcome.


Tiaq
htng@aries.ece.cmu.edu


PS. Went to the Pittsburgh Auto Show today. The S4 in the emerald
mica green is just fantastic. Too bad about the Canadian Elm and
MFA not being available anymore. Set up an appointment for a test
drive too!!