Chevy & GMC Vans

well i think either my alternator is dead or i have a power drain some where , how can you test for a power drain or bad alt??

sunday morning i had to get a boost because the battery was dead and sunday night when i was getting ready to go to work i went to start it to warm it up and it was dead again. its a good thing my work is a 10 min walk or a 2 min drive.


HELP PLEASE

You will need an ammeter to look for any current draw when not running. Otherwise you will need to fully charge the battery and do a load test on it. How old is the battery?

the battery is just over a year old , i have a multi meter like this one http://www.nrgdynamics.co.uk/images/our ... imeter.jpg

That meter will only work to 10 amps max. This may not work for your application because you have to hook it up inline and I know on my van, when I connect the battery terminal I get a pretty good spark so I would be hesitant of using it with only a 10 amp limit. Do you have access to a clamp-on ammeter? I would just take the battery for a load test, could be a dead cell.

my father in law said to unhook the pos and set it for ohms and check for power drain?

You can't check resistance and find anything out. There is a PCM and it will show a low resistance. What you can do is disconnect the positive terminal. Now plug the red DMM lead into the top hole in your DMM, right under the 10A location. Now plug the black DMM lead into the bottom (COM) port. switch the DMM to the 10A setting. Now connect the black lead to the positive battery cable and the red lead to the positive terminal on the battery. If it is less than 10 amps, the meter will show it. If it is more than 10 amps, you may not read anything and the internal fuse may be blown.

ok ill try that , but it starts with a boost and runs .if this fuse is blown where is it ? thanks

The battery MUST be fully charged before starting. The fuse I am talking about will be inside the meter.

you can test the alternator pretty easy. take a voltage reading of the battery with the van off (should be 11-12volts or close to that). then start the van and take another voltage reading (should be around 13.5 - 14.4volts). if your battery reading with the van running is the same as the van off then your alternator isn't doing its job.

running its around the 14v area ,im thinking there something thats draining the battery after the van is turned off, i just got a boost this morning so im going to let it run for a while to get the battery charged up , but currently theres a nasty snow storm here plus a winter storm warning for the area

tbhager94 wrote:running its around the 14v area ,I'm thinking there something that's draining the battery after the van is turned off, i just got a boost this morning so I'm going to let it run for a while to get the battery charged up , but currently there's a nasty snow storm here plus a winter storm warning for the area

Do like lifted said and disconnect the negative battery cable from the battery and hook one of the leads from your multimeter to the cable and the other to the battery terminal, make sure the leads are in the AMP holes and the meter is on the AMP setting. You will see the draw from the ECM and radio Presets, should be lower than .075 mA. If it is higher start pulling the fuses and watch the meter for a drop. Unhook the wire going to the Alternator and see if that changes also.

it turns out i just didnt let it fully charge after it went dead the first time .
i currently have bigger probs right now like a partally locked up engine