Jeff,
definitely try a different battery first. Your charging system might be
bad, but the battery is too, I think. A 4 hour charge with 5 amps should
easily be enough to charge the battery enough.
Can you swap in the battery from your other car?
Ulix
On Sun, 20 Sep 1998, Jeff Boatright wrote:
> My charging system may have packed it in, too. The battery seemed to not be
> holding a charge for the last month. I was putting it on a 6 amp trickle
> charger on the weekends until I could get out from under my next deadline
> (last one of the year, hurray!). On this charger, as the batter charges,
> the amp meter drops from 5 (for instance) to down around 1. Yesterday, even
> with a 4 hour charge, the car would not start. I jumped it off my wife's
> car and went for a drive (at night, of course. Can't be too smart about
> this stuff). The lights dimmed a lot (much more than they used too) at
> idle. Also, the rpms had to be much higher before the charging light would
> go out. Upon returning, I disconnected the battery from the car and
> connected it to the charger again. The amp meter started at around 2 and
> then went UP! This morning it was at 5. I've never seen this before. Is all
> of this just a dead battery? It's a 5-year battery on it's eleventh year...
>
> Is there a website that goes into charging system diagnosis? The Haynes
> manual just says to take the car to a specialist at a service center.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jeff
>
> Jeffrey H. Boatright, PhD
> Editor-in-Chief, Molecular Vision
> http://www.emory.edu/molvis
> "Seeing the Future in a Very Tiny Way"
>
>
Ulix __/__,__
.......................................................... (_o____o_)....
'67 Sprite
|