My 1992 Saturn has been eating up and spitting out alternators, three in the last 1 1/2 most recently replaced in January and now going bad. Intermittent power failure. I’m thinking a wiring problem or something else that is causing this…HELP
The problem might be a poor connection at the positive battery terminal. Your battery has the side mount terminals. And it’s under the postive terminal where corrosion can form causing a voltage drop.
The alternator uses a reference voltage from the battery to determine how much to charge the battery. If there’s a poor connection, the alternator will think that the battery is very low on charge or dead. This then can cause the alternator to go to full output to charge what it thinks is a dead battery. This then causes the alternator to run hot which shortens the alternators life.
Have all the connections between the alternator and battery checked out to make sure they are good connections. Or you could just have the positive battery cable replaced to see if this prevents the killing of the alternator.
Tester
Thanks for the advise - will have it checked out and let you know.