Guess my car is f*****!

[drumminian]

ok so I've had my system in my car for the past 3 months and it's been fine, till this last month and a half. it's just been dying and dying all the time it's died on me the past 7 days straight. and I've had to jump it every fucking time unless I'm on a hill and can pop the clutch. The car is a 1997 toyota tercel and I have no idea how powerful the alternator on it was in the first place... the gains are set pretty low thought that would help but it didn't..

example...last night my car sat for about 8 hours at and I woke up to go to the store and it was dead drove to the store which is about 2 miles with no radio turned on amps were off and everything and car died when I came back out of the store.

so with having no money, and just getting laid off and having to buy books for school, and some how paying for my rent has made me come down to the conclusion that I need a new alternator or battery for as cheap as possible..which do you think needs replacing first..and there's no way and hell I'm gonna be able to buy a h/o alt from dom..$360 bucks is like freaking impossible for me to ever have

so what do i need to do...?

Edited January 4, 2010 by drumminian

[Red-navi-916]

my lucky dice i just rolled told me its the alt

[theabunai]

if you can get your hands on a dmm i would check the amperage draw of the car when off... maybe something is drawing unnecessary amperage when the vehicle is off draining your battery..

you can also test the alt to see if it is actually charging the batt with the dmm (clamp would be better)

Also is it6 a deep cycle battery.. most fac batteries if they get too drained aren't made to be recharged back up... only deep cycles can be drained and recharged without affecting it performance or ability to hold the charge...

@red-nav... no magic 8-ball for you, or is the dice just prettier LOL =)

Edited January 4, 2010 by theabunai

[tristan560]

Who says you need a HO? Buy a stock one for 100$ish and turn the bass down till you get money.

And if you need money so bad...sell some of your equipment. Lifes tough...sometimes you have to make sacrifices...or sell your body.

[drumminian]

Yeah I have a dmm how would I go about testing the amperage draw?

and no it's not a deep cycle batter just the one that came with the car..so thats a really big possiblity

[drumminian]

Who says you need a HO? Buy a stock one for 100$ish and turn the bass down till you get money.

And if you need money so bad...sell some of your equipment. Lifes tough...sometimes you have to make sacrifices...or sell your body.

not my equipment to sell...brother gave me everything lol and he'd be pretty pissed if i dont have any of it anymore

[Loudcav]

the battery is probably the culpret next time that you jump it go to autozone and have them load test it for you

[theabunai]

Disconnect the main power from the batt..

put the dmm leads in line

switch to amperage.

make sure you switch the leads to the amperage draw postions..

and it should give you a reading..

A car in the off position should read no more then 60mA

of course draw depends on things that you have that are energized when the vehicle is off... like alarms, security LED lights etc etc..

You can take the value of the draw and check it against the batteries aH rating to see how long it should last before the battery dips below the 9volt state rendering the vehicle unstartable

[drumminian]

Disconnect the main power from the batt..

put the dmm leads in line

switch to amperage.

make sure you switch the leads to the amperage draw postions..

and it should give you a reading..

A car in the off position should read no more then 60mA

of course draw depends on things that you have that are energized when the vehicle is off... like alarms, security LED lights etc etc..

You can take the value of the draw and check it against the batteries aH rating to see how long it should last before the battery dips below the 9volt state rendering the vehicle unstartable

ok so theres not much amperage draw I got around 25mA so thats not the problem I guess I'm gonna need to buy a better battery

[Ray]

I got my money on bad battery.