What the hell??? This a.m., going to work - looked down and the volt meter was pegged. When I came to a stop / at idle, the meter read about 14 volts. When I accelerated, the guage pegged. Same thing every time I had to stop at a light.
I'm thinkin' voltage regulator. What do YOU think??? BTW - are wiring appears to be connected. If this is a true reading, my battery must be smoked!!!
Thanks, Gary

 

BUMP!!! RU all asleep???

 

Alternator overcharge. Meter the alt. voltage by hand to be sure. It will eventually fry itself

 

Need to quit driving the car until you verify a good alt (easier said than done, I know). Get a multimeter, and check voltage at the battery terminals with car running. If your meter verifies what the cluster gauge is telling you, get that alt fixed before you fry some of your systems. Your cluster voltmeter is just a simple version of a "normal" meter, having inputs from the power and ground sides of the wiring in the gauge cluster, so if it appears to be working, it probably is...

 

do not drive the car if the voltage is exceeding 15 volts, or you will burn up the electrical parts (like the CPU and ECU and the lights).

Your alternators regulator has failed... replace the alt.

 

Actually, yes.
My time stamp says 4:56AM you bitch.


-Ted

 

Lol, it's funny we're all in our own little worlds and sometimes don't realize the guys we're talking to are just waking up in the morning on the other side of the world...Technology, gotta love it

 

Probably the voltage regulater, but the gauge/wiring might be screwy. You know about the fine wiring job they did in these cars.

 

And you better not be bumping after only 20 minutes again... maybe after 24 or 48 hours... but bumping after only 20 or 30 minutes shows that you are an impatient child.

 

The wiring is normal Japanese wiring of the mid-late eighties and still light years ahead of most euro or american cars of the time.

What do you expect of a 15 + year old car???

 

I agree to that....

 

All right; I replaced the alt and battery. No more overcharging. Done deal.
Thanks,

 

I have had several 15 year old cars and never had a wiring problem ever. I will agree with the Japanese end of it though, as My parents had an 80 Dodge colt that had melted the fuse panel. Maybe I've been lucky. The only wiring issues I've had with the 7 are the clock, and the logicon lamps.

 

I'm making money also rebuilding some Porsche and Lexus electrical stuff.... and almost every time the part is 10-15 years old.

And what about all those Fords, that had ignition switches melting down just like our light switches when someone doesn't maintain the bulbs and sockets (only if the Ford one didn't get stopped in time or the battery didn't go dead, it burnt the car down)

Or the firebirds that the headlight motors just fail randomly.

Or the radio on any 10+ year old car...

Its the age, not the car.

 

Like I said, I've had several 15 year old cars. They are:
78 Chevy Caprice. Had that back in 97. The flexible circut board cracked. I lost 3 dash lamps. Other than that I had no electrical problems.
85 Chevy Caprice. Back in 98, I had that for over three years and had no electrical issue. Come to think of it the digital radio was broken. A **** was kicked or somthing though. I guess that was from physical abuse.
81 Mazda GLC No electrical problems.
have an 84 F-150 and had no electrical problems. The dash lights are a bit dim though.
89 RX-7 Logicon acts screwy. The illumination lamps don't work sometimes. BTW I might send that off to you sometime Mark.
88 rx-7 Massive short that drained the battery regularly. I never figured it out. I used it as parts car.
I have a friend that used to have a 90 rx. His brake lights quit working one time. I looked at the wires going into the fuse panel and found that the insulation had melted on every single wire going into it. That's why my perception of Mazda wiring is a bit biased. I am not saying that other wiring problems with other cars don't exist, I was just saying that I never really had any trouble.