bad alternator? or connection?, please help, its my DD Options

[cjh4l22]

ok so i have a 95st w/lots of miles but heres the deal... i've never had problems with it until tonight when i was driving it home. had the lights on and the cd player, everything seemed to be fine but when i would remove my foot from the accelerator to the cluth+brake the lights would dim and my battery power would drop from ~12-14V to 10. a couple times my cd player even turned off.. it seemed the harder i hit the brakes and if i used anything powered in the car without being in gear/on the gas the lights would dim. didn't notice the rpm's dropping particularly fast or anything... castrol syntec used in oil change 3k ago, new air filter, new fuses a few months ago, recently cleaned the batter terminals and had the battery tested.. its the darndest thing. thanks for any help you might have.

[pittfirefighter]

sounds like alternator is going bad... doesn't give full juice at low RPM'S and anything that draws electric is overwhelming your battery...

[hurley97]

I agree, sounds like the alternator is going. But usually when you go below 10-11v the discharge light on the dash will come on.

try having the car running with all accessories on and disconnecting the battery, see what happens.

[pipes]

i would suggest checking all of your grond wires... if some corrosion builds up you can have problems at low rpms mine did the same thing found that it was a ground wire that was green all the way back. ust a thought though

[HrMajestyUK]

sounds like alternator to me too. Had similar prob, lights would dim when I went on full beam etc. then I noticed ABS light coming on and stuff.. then one night at about 1am, doing about 90mph everything cut out when I flicked to high beam! lights, power, the lot.. no way to even alert drivers behind me that I was there... and couldn't see a thing in front of me! Luckily it came back on as I flicked the high beam switch... don't ask me how.. was scary as hell!

Go get it checked as soon as! Managed to find one on ebay for £30 and problem solved!

[qatar11]

If you can afford the down time, I would recommend taking your alternator to a dedicated "Starter / Alternator" shop (i.e. NOT Autozone). The will usually be able to rebuild and refurbish your Alternator to a like new condition for a fraction of the cost of some 3rd party refurb, and it will be more reliable then snagging a used one off teh superwebmachine