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Hello everybody!!

Bit of a weird one on my hands atm, here are my simptoms:

The car was left with it's negative terminal disconected from the battery for like 3 weeks ( it was working just fine before that)

With the engine ON:

Dashboard and Navi display lights flickering from dim to bright and vice versa randomly,
The graphics change also between day/night time colors on the Navi screen.
The stereo volume goes up and down verry random, on any source, cd, radio, aux,
The GPS position is drifting on the map,
The Honda HDS randomly disconnects and then connects back up again,
On idle the voltage no load on the battery terminals reads 14.6V , goes down to 13.6 wit full load ( hi beams, AC on, Window defroster , hazards ) didn't touch the steering on this measurement sadly as it would of been relevant.
On cold condition the car is stable with the engine running idle.
On operating temp, combined with me moving the steering left right ( electric steering) it stars doing the above symptoms.HDS says in the data grid that the steering pulls out 40-45 Ah when I do full loock L to full lock R fast.
The car had an electronic hi pitch whine in the speakers especially noticed on the aux input on higher volumes.

With the engine OFF these issues go away completely so it's got to be alternator / electrical load related.

Suspecting it's a combination of the battery being to weak to sustain real loads ( electronic steering) and the alternator's rectifier letting out some AC Ripple ( hence the erratic electronics behaviour) this getting accentuated by the operating temp of the engine.

All these symptoms started being from a bit frequent, one time per 5-10 seconds to once a second, culminating with my engine dying on me mid drive on a 40 mph zone at 2AM somewhere in London.
This is in a period of 2 days.
Lucky for me when this car brakes it's pretty considerate to where it does that, it's always in a convenient place /time so I managed to pull over safely.

Back story:

The car had an OEM Navigation system retrofitted by me 7 ish years ago , clip on youtube of the process, will make another thread about that.
This car towed a small caravan (850 KG), said caravan had a dual battery setup, (2 batteries in parallel), said batteries ended up killing eachother and I'm prety sure while the car was towing the killer caravan batteries slowly started killing my car's battery also.
The caavan is fitted with a split charge rellay and a 250W solar charging system (Victron MPPT solar charge controller), the caravan was a Covid build, built by me, for those interested I can post a thread about that also.
The towing hapened mainly in the summer, once every month or so, sometimes more often for weekend escapes to Wales.
The last tow was last year August last year whn it went for a Euro trip from UK to Poland, the car overheated on the way , I had to tow it to the destination and do a full engine overhaul , that's a storry for another thread.

The car's battery is around 5 years old so end of life realy, it's a 60Ah one , it's been upgraded because the car has a subwoofer and other electronics added to it (dash cam, oem Navigation unit etc)
I suspect the alternator ( original one ) might of struggled to charge all 3 batteries while towing (with the caravan fridge on also) and started to slowly die....most likely the rectifier.
I also suspect the Battery as if it stays ignition on (engine not started) for more than 20 mins it won't start the car after that ( low voltage)


As per usual, I tend to have problems that nobody else has , or at least nobody posted about it that I can find on the internet.
I'll embark on a public transport journey to an Eurocarparts today to buy a car battery and an alternator, I'm extatic about that journey, I lways say everything takes an hour (or more by car) to get to in London, this time paradoxically, by car it would of taken me 25 mins but by public transport it will be an hour 10 mins, so everything does take an hour or more to get to one way or another fml...

I'll keep you guys posted.
I hope this post will help someone strugling with simillar issues.

PS this being a UK/EU model it DOES NOT have an ELD ( Electronic Load Detection ) unit , that's for all the AI bullshit engines out there that kept pointing me in the wrong direction constantly....
I hate AI...it's like a personalised confident sleezy politician liar in your pocket...

 
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PS 2 I absolutely love this car, the styling of it, it's interior/exterior design, it drove me through my best and worst times in my life, I have an unexplicable bond with it.
I take pride in how I maintain this car myself, trust me when I say this , it does not look like a 20 year old car inside and out.

I feel like I've reached a happy medium of afordability, fuel echonomy, style and tech in a car so I'd like to keep it 4 as long as I can.

NO I DON'T WANT to buy a new car, so if you feel like replying that to this thread, you can F%$K right off....feel free to do the same if you'd like to suggest a visit to the Honda dealer.....

That being said, any constructive feedback or opinions are welcome

 
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I wouldn't buy an aftermarket alternator. Hondas are very picky when it comes to electronics.

 
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OK verry quick update:

The hopefull part of me was hoping it was just the battery but I ended up listening to the rational side of me and bought both a battery and an alternator.

First I've replaced the battery, started the engine, all good for 20 seconds but because now the battery was new and holding it's voltage the issues started happening sooner, it ran for 2 mins then the engine stopped by itself, at that point I was ferm convinced it was the alternator that failled. I didn't even want to consider the ECU even tho the car generated all sorts of ECU related codes.
My intuition was telling me it's deffinetly the AC ripple from the alternator.

Swapped the alternator and happy days it's fixed.
Another tell tell sign was that ever since I got this car, when I was connecting stuff to it's line in port i kept getting a faint hi pitch noise that I know now was the alternator telling me that it's sending AC ripple in the DC line.
With a new alternator , not a peep can be heard even at full volume.

I've learned smth today!

Happy fixing!

 
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boy were you right about that!

Bought a Lucas alternator LRA03157.
After installation started the car and gave it some propper load test :
ac on, window demister on , headlights on hi beams on, hazards, stereo loud, and left right steering (uk model so steering is electric) and it worked, I was watching the voltage with DashCmd OBD app data grid and with all on on peak it dropped bellow 12V briefly but came back up, with no load it was constant t 13.8-9.
At some point i saw some smoke came out of that region (I was in the car) and could smell some hot laquer but thought, abuse test, new alternator laqer, it got hot, maybe normal as the car was behaving excellent.

It worked flawlesly for 2 drives and a half after that point..... untill it showed the same simptoms, killing my engine and AC Ripple whine in the stereo, volume up and down , dash flickering.
I know this now, Lucas does not make new alternators, they are a remanufacturing company....I am pissed beyond any point now, will go back to eurocarparts to geet another one, not Lucas Branded tho....
What a joke....

 
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As crappy as it is, atleast it failed quickly and not 6 months/a year later

 
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Update, went to eurocarparts and returned the faulty one .
Replaced it in the car, all good again.
Took it for a spin, all good, hopefully this is the last time i worry about this.
I'm keeping the original one, will try and remanufacture it myself (replace it's brushes, rectifier and bearings), either that or found a couple on ebay from cars with 120k miles, I'm on double that atm.
Nothing beats remanufacturing myself an original unit I think.

 
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took it for a night spin, headlights and ac on, started it , stopped it, started it again, seems solid.
Moral of the story kids, past 180-200k miles check your alternators....
A god tel tel sign of AC Ripple is the stereo hi pitch whine , if you hear that , check the alternator's rectifier as that is failling.
If you have HDS and do a All DTC code scan, it will trigger all sorts of codes SRS, Steering codes etc stored in the vehicle history codes, the good news is that they seem to all be because of to much ripple in the DC system that triggers all sorts of errors, all unrelated to the alternator.
Glad I followed my intuition on this one.
Happy motoring!
Let's hope this is the end of this storry for me!

 
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long story short, the car worked stellar on the day and night spin, the next morning i started it and it ran for 20 seconds and stopped.
trying to start it again after that gave me on ign 2 position a bunch of clicking rellays inside the dash right hand side (uk car) so steering on the R side.
The crazy thing was the car won't start while the clicking rellays are clicking but, it would start if I'd connect a Dash CMD OBD readder to it, the crazy thing is it would only start with that connected, if I'd connect the Honda Monguse OBD2 to USB adaptor it wouldn't start and the relays would be clicking endlesly.....
Ruling out everything else (new battery, new alternator, I even dismantled and fully cleaned the Ignition Switch) , the Wires look ok so the only thing left is the ECU that went bad.
Will dismantle it tomorrow and see if I'm lucky i've got a couple of dry/exploded capacitors to replace.
The massive AC Ripple probably fried some electrolitics , either that or the 20 years of service of the ECU in a verry hostyle environment finally took it's toll on it.
The car is to good to scrapp at this point so I'm going ahead with repairing it.
Basically everything underside is replaced from suspensons to rear axple, brakes pads , muffler, it recently had a top end engine rebuild, head, head gasket, timing chain etc.
At this point it's intriguing to find what's wrong with it.I see it as a challenge.
This thread can be considered a troubleshooting journal hope it helps someone in the future.

 
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finally found the real issue.
I had a bolt loose, the one that fastenes the main engine wire loom's ground to the engine, That caused my first alternator to get weird and possibly damaged it's rectifier.
The issue is described in this clip by this dude :
After giving up and had a propper Saturday night out , In the hangover morning I've asked Perplexity AI what could be the issue, describing my above symptoms, it came up with a couple of links, one of the links was the clip below with my exact sollution.


That was it, the car is stellar now.
I did find a superdeal on ebay for an ECU and lock kit and an alternator from a donor vehicle with only 125k miles that was scrapped due to rear axle failling, I'll keep those as spare , reman the alternator and eventually re swap it so the car would run on a genuine Honda alternator rather than the Lucas one.

Happy days!!!!

Hope this helps someone.

 
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Confirmed, that was the problem, drove the car a bunch locally and I was off to Birmingham, AC on, loads on, the car is stellar now!
Hope this helps someone!

 
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wow, glad you find the issue! Thanks for posting all this info as well!

 
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on top of that, I’ve observed a consistent MPG increase from 32/42 mpg urban/motorway
to now 35/47 mpg urban/motorway

so a new battery and alternator helped the fuel
economy!