well heres the deal. the battery has about 12.4 volts in it...good.
one day i started up the car, backed it out of the garage, installed a radio, turned on the car...and the alternator which usually charges the car at just before the line between 13 and 18 on startup is now charging between 13 and the one below it, charging and keeping the battery at just about 12.2 volts.
so i check for continuity between positive and negative terminals for the battery with the battery out, car off, everything closed or not on, and i get coninuity. not a good thing.
so lets get testing. i take out the radio fuse just to eliminate that i might have done something wrong. take it out, start up the car, same result. so what i did is fine. i move to the engine compartment.
the alternator has one wire to the chassis of the alternator and a two wire plug coming off the side of it, with a black and a red wire. i test the red wire and attatch the other end of my volt meter to chassis. i got continuity. not a good thing. heres what i needa know....where do the two wires run from the alternator? i see them go to a harness for the TPS and coolant sensors and then go down the front of the engine block. where does it go from there? does that red wire from the plug go to the starter?
anything would be cool. im gonna go back out there and start lookin at the fuse block.

its a 92 V6 Camaro

 

Remember that there are a few things which will draw current 24/7 on your car.. the ECU, your radio's memory circuit, and your alarm, if you have one. To be entirely sure of what's going on, you should be checking with these things disconnected. Also, taking readings in actual ohm values is preferrable.

Step one: Check again, making sure you closed your doors (I had a blonde moment that caused me to worry for some time.. of course there's continuity if the door is open and it's trying to turn on the dome light)

Step two: remove accessory fuse and check again.

Step 3: every other fuse, one at a time, keeping track of what amperage fuse goes in each spot. Write it down or draw a picture. Take readings in between each fuse.

 

im back...
ACC fuse has some power running through it. i dont know why i didnt pick it up earlier, but its the culprit. i have never spliced into it for any of my gauges, only tapped into the fuse. and i did notice that with the car off and the door open that if i put a gauge to it, that the gauge lights up. so i know its the acc fuse.

what does this control? i know my dome lights comes on,
my guesses are cig lighter and afew other things, but i need to know what so i can get rollin. BTW the fuse is not broken.

i remember YEARS ago, like 5 or 6 that the fuse used to blow out when my dad used the cig lighter, but one day with one fuse it just never blew.

btw anyone know the rating for the fuse of that spot just to make sure i have the right one



mike

 

How exactly are you testing this? ACC will have power at all times.. and saying it has current draw when your door is open goes straight back to my "test it with the doors closed" because yes, the dome light exists on that circuit, as well as your cig lighter and radio memory.

Labelling your ACC the culprit that quickly tends to mean "there's nothing wrong with the car"

As I recall, it's supposed to be a 20A fuse.. but most cars I see have a 25A sitting there.

 

It just dawned on me that you're using a plain continuity tester, not a multimeter... in which case, you just false-positive'd because of the dome light with the door open. Next?

Also, continue testing positive battery cable -> negative battery cable (with the battery disconnected, of course).. just pull fuses till the continuity goes away, then start checking the circuit of the last fuse you pulled. If you know that circuit has an accessory that's trying to turn itself on, then the circuit is likely fine, because the accessory trying to turn itself on will create continuity.

 

its a DMM on continuity.


remove ACC fuse test battery cables, doors shut everything off, and no coninuity. if you recall in my other post i said with doors closed and all i said at another time when i ran a gauge to acc with doors open and closed the gauge was lit.

mike

edit: is it possible that the short is before the fuse? because the dome light doesnt stay on and when i put the blinker on when the car is runnign the tach moves up and down alittle bit.

and nothing has blown the fuse...but i also dont use a cigarette lighter.

what else is on the acc circut and what gives power to the circuit?

 

yeah, but you also said you tested your ACC fuse circuit with the door open... but yes, I seem to have serious trouble reading your posts fully otherwise

Here's the $10M question, though. With the ACC fuse disconnected, does your electrical problem go away when the car is running?

 

toushe'.......


going outside to test it now

 

The jumping tach is a bad ground in your cluster.. although, a bad ground in your cluster could mean your voltage gauge is off, too. I'm writing up a tech article on fixing this.. I'll make sure to let you know when it's done.

Only things on ACC I can think of are the interor courtesy lights, cig lighter, and stereo memory. power comes direct from battery to the fuse box, not sure if it's connected via the starter or the distribution block, though.

 

well i took out the fuse, no difference in voltage.

i have the wiring diagrams from Mitchell OnDemand5 and im gonna study them now.

 

Remove both your radio and acc fuse and take it for a drive.. if this doesn't solve the problem, either your gauge is malfunctioning and it's a phantom problem, or it's time to start looking at the charging system itself as the culprit (alternator/battery/voltage regulator)

 

What kind of Alt do you have?

Stock size or bigger???

I found the stock size Alt to be kind of flaky myself.
The 108 amp upgrad Alt from autozone has been a blessing.
& $60 not $100+ like most over a 100 amps.

 

right around 110 amp alternator...its got i think 2 years on it. never had a problem with it before.

and the gauge is correct i checked it with my DVM.

battery is brand new.