I'm hoping someone else out there has seen this and can point me quickly to a solution. I've searched all the prior posts and havent seen anything that occurs NOT right away.

 

The story:

So I'm driving along happy and the HICAS light comes on. No problem, top off the pwr steering, right! Shortly thereafter the ANTILOCK light comes on and I lose power steering, hmmm, this is a new one. Well, I'm running so I'll get it checked out tomorrow. Go to start the car up the next day and it almost doesn't. Like it's turning over but no fuel. Finally starts rough.

 

Shop says my battery is dead ( been 3 years & not used often) and my alternator is gone. Eh, ok, fix it! Wondering in the back of my head, how come an indicator never came on for battery charging failure?

 

Christmas shopping about 60 miles after being fixed, same symptoms, except this time I start losing power to (all the way to none - really wierd). Have to pull over and get towed back to the shop. They say, ahh, we appeared to give you a bad battery, this happens. I'm skeptical but they payed for the tow, so fine. fix it!

 

Last night, short story version, about 60 miles into my 2nd new battery and same thing. I've checked the fuses by the accellerator pedal and the big bank in the engine compartment. All OK.

 

Any ideas? I'll be supremely greatful.

Thanks,

Mickey

 

1991TT, 70K mi

Chip upgrade and misc.

I`d get the alternator checked properly. Sometimes they can overcharge with no warning and bugger the battery.

 

Bob

Right do you have any problem starting from cold ?? if not and problem arises when car reaches operating temp first couple things to check are PTU and ECU TEMP SENSER, also do a ecu diagnostic and see what code you get.

The first time (w/ original bad alternator) there were problems starting cold, but since then it appears to be only at temp. Hopefully I'll get some more answers answers from the shop tomorrow. Thanks for the quick suggestions.

check your power steering pipe for leaks, ive recently had a pipe failure which stuffed me alternator up , i did get the light on dash though but was very dim,, before i realized battery wasnt getting charged, ps pipe was repaired but leak had done the damage , its worth a look , just reading into our hicas light syptoms

Did it leak to empty (to kill the alternator)? I did have them fix a long-existing leak in the power steering line. I never lost power steering due to the leak though.

 

Anyway an update: Jumped the car with a buddy and drove about 20 miles back to the shop. How far can you drive w/o an alternator after charging for 15 minutes?

depends if you were using lights etc the loss of power after a long distance sounds like it could be the alternator still it could be pushing out 12v or just under instead of 14v in which case if you have lights on etc as well as normal electrical circuits it will drain the battery down to zero volts get the alternator checked/replaced

No lights or wipers (raining at dusk) or anything else, figured I'd want the max range possible.

 

I'm sure the biggest suspect is now the alternator, I'm just worried that I've got something else going on that killing alternators!

sounds to me that the voltage regulator in the alternator isnt working, which is why the red light doesnt come on .. that usualy occurs when the rectifier has paccked up, another tip is to make sure all your engine bay earth cables are makin contact

Just replying to close the loop and thank (again) those who read and posted on this thread:

 

So, short answer - It appears the replacement alternator had an intermitant failure that was not exposing itself after hours of idling but would eventually, thus killing the battery and giving me my wierd symptoms. I've put about 150 miles on the newest alternator and things are looking good (let's hope they stay that way). BTW - the "bad" alternator was from Nissan.

 

Thanks again!