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So this problem isnt too bad .. yet.. but i want to nip it in the butt right away.

Starting last friday morning, i started the car, battery light came on and my radar detector displayed 11.6v instead of the normal ~14.5.. car was still running strong and with a quick blip of the throttle voltage settled right back to normal.. drove 5 hours to michigan no problem.
cue next startup: no problems..
next start up.. happens again..

also this whole time electical load was no A/C, no subs, occastional headlights.

this has continued in almost that exact pattern since.. any ideas?

I will be replacing my grounding cables soon so that might fix it.

 
Rep Power: 511

My car did that to me twice: once when my alternator started to go before it actually **** the bed, the other time was just before my battery decided to die out on me.

wouldn't hurt to get them both checked out before they randomly die on you.

 
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Lol I do the constant radar detector voltage monitoring thing too, thought I was the only one.

If you're getting around 14 volts while driving with the head lights on and wind shield wipers running, stereo on etc...then the alternator is probably fine. Replace the battery.

 
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oh yeah.. battery is an optima yellow top that is <2yrs old.

still think its battery related?

 
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the alternator can regularly dip down in the 11.5v range during normal driving when pressing the gas due to the ELD cutoff switch. in fact if i tried i could keep the alt turned off most of the time, but that wastes gas because throttle must be pressed. when coasting or using accessories, it should be 14v. and at idle normally should be 14v as well (or as low as 13.5v). also the battery light should never come on with a bad battery, only with bad alternator. more than likely the alt is working but not putting out the full 60 amps. a good auto parts tech will be able to tell you this if he knows how to use the tester. once the car is started, most everything runs off the alt and not the battery. if the battery light turns off at higher revs, im almost positive the alt is producing some power, but not enough.

uh oh, optima yellow top. unfortunately the exact same happened to me back in 2005 when my car was only a few yrs old. got an "upgrade" optima yellow and less than 2 yrs later it would barely start the car and was done. it took the alt with it and totally fried it. i later realized this is due to the optima being a deep cycle battery which is not compatible with an automotive charging system. it would always read low volts, and the alt could never bring it to a full charge. but it sure died trying lol. it was working non stop towards the end and the shop said the battery killed it. never again. been using lead acid flooded battery ever since and recently a small agm motorcycle battery with no problems.

 
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I have constant voltage monitoring via my VAFC-II.. With a happy battery and alternator, my ELD will bounce my voltage from 12.5-14.2 during normal operations.

Autozone does free battery checks. Dunno if the alternator is a free check though, prolly is. That's why I said it wouldn't hurt to check 'em both out.

 
Rep Power: 812

the voltage changes based on temps too. in summer, 11.5v-13.5v is the range. in winter, 12.5-15.5v is the range depending on whether the car is warmed up and the outside temp. batteries hate summer heat because they discharge more rapidly and when they dip below 12.6v even for 24 hrs, sulfation begins to occur and shortens the battery life. this happens more slowly in winter.

 
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I have never heard that before, lots of friends from school run yellows in their cars daily, ive never heard of a problem..

but now that i have googled that issues.. i see lots of results.. and given how i know our stock ALT put out only what power the stock electronics need, it seems to add up that its not getting a full charging.. though it does seems like quite few kept them alive by doing an annual trickle charge so maybe ill give that a shot.

 
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I had an optima yellowtop in my car for 7 years no problems..

 
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if you want an optima for some reason, you MUST charge it at least every week with a real smart charger like the battery tender plus. it is one of the only chargers that will actually bring an agm deep cycle battery to full 100% charge. the alternator will NEVER do this and slowly the battery dies and takes the alt with it. riceboy must be very lucky or at least drives the car long distances very often. its not the typical battery you want in a car.

 
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every week?? really? that seems strange if the electrical load is not exceeding normal conditions (AKA, what Optima says the battery is for) than shouldnt it be just fine for a while? my subs are out of the car for the last 18mos so the electrical load is back to good ole OEM.

 
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I bought it back in early 05 and finally crapped itself a few weeks ago. Most of my driving when I bought it were short in-town trips, with the exception of a NY to Vegas trip, and many trips up and down the west coast.

 
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well you do realize the car draws battery power all the time, even when parked right? not much but enough to where after a couple weeks the car might not start. the ecu, keyless receiver, clock, stereo, etc all draw small amounts of power to keep memory. okay so it may not be every week unless you have a smaller reserve capacity battery. but you would have to at least check the battery with a voltmeter once a week and charge it up as soon as you see voltage drop below 12.6v if you want it to last.

 
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Yes of course i realize that, but that is what Honda designed the system to output to keep the system properly charged. This line of batteries is designed to help deal with high power audio systems and the like on top of the normal day to day operation. So i just thought that running it in a car that is bone stock electrically should mean that the battery has ~0amp draw while the car is running.

 
Rep Power: 812

well, the 60 amps is barely enough to run the car's systems on a normal day. also remember that each time you start the car, the battery is run down, which then needs to be charged back up again. starting a car takes way more power than people think. many people recommend driving the car at least 10 miles after starting the engine in order to charge the battery back up. and even then, no alternator will be able to properly charge a car battery (regardless of the type), because there is a very specific and precise charging sequence required to actually get a battery past 80% of its capacity. something only a microprocessor controled charger is capable of. so over time, even if the battery is kept relatively near 12.6v using just the alternator, the battery will still not have as long of a life than if you charged it regularly with a smart charger every few weeks. this is why most batteries never last 10 yrs like they used to. people just stopped caring. if a battery lasts 5 yrs its considered a long time these days. if you want a battery to somehow buffer the effects of a larger stereo system, you would want to get the one with the largest reserve capacity possible. but a battery is simply an energy storage device. you always need to put back what you take out.

 
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Thank you all, i will charge this weekend and switch to my big3 grounding kit and report back.

 
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If battery dips below 9.6 volts on startup its bad. Change it. (You need something with a min and max peak setting)

If not investigate elsewhere.

 
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Hey Guys,
I found this thread and want to comment about batteries and charging in general and YellowTops in particular.
First, I would recommend to use your radar detector, dash volt meter or any other plug in device that registers voltage output as a monitor, but not a absolute correct reading. It is much better to check at the battery terminals to get a correct reading. This day and age with so many electronics on a car, you seldom get a correct reading elsewhere, just try it.
I am a musclecar kinda of guy with a few new cars in the mix but if I were to guess, based on my personal experience, I would say you may have a regulator going weak. Sometimes on older cars, you have to “excite” the alternator by revving up the RPMs to 1000 or so to get the charging started. With the new electronics mentioned on your car by others, I could be wrong but I would check that. It may be hard to pen point that if it is going bad but still working most of the time too, keep that in mind.
Unless a battery has a internal short, seldom do batteries kill alternators, almost always it is the other way around. However, alternators are not meant to recharge deeply-discharged batteries and won't properly recharge them other than a long trip with no stopping. It would take several hours of driving to properly recharge a weak battery.
Under normal conditions, as in drive the car daily a distance far enough to keep a battery recharged, you shouldn't need to trickle charge any battery. Now, if you let your car sit, or if you sit in the driveway with a stereo playing every afternoon, then you may need to trickle charge. If you have to trickle charge weekly to maintain a full charge on your battery, there is an underlaying issue that needs to be addressed. Maybe you draw more current than you replace by not driving far enough every day, maybe you have a parasitic draw on the battery, maybe you have added enough stereo amps, etc, that the alternator is no longer keeping up, but under normal conditions, it should keep the battery about the same voltage every day. If you check your voltage every morning, and that voltage varies or drops daily, then there is a charging issue somewhere.
YellowTop Optima batteries are dual-propose, deep-cycling batteries and charge or should charge with any factory system, no additional maintenance required as long, again as you have an OEM setup or have upgraded your charging system to keep up with stereo or other upgrades. Every system, issue or problem is different and remember, internet complains seldom tell the whole story about what has been done when people post about an issue. In the case of batteries, most times the weak battery is a symptom of the real problem, not the cause of the problem.
Depending on use, batteries do last a long time. I have a Redtop that is over 11 years old and still going strong. Keep in mind, every year cars get more and more electronics and that means more and more demand on charging systems and batteries. All this figures into the mix when considering battery life, add a climate where you have very hot temps, like the Southwest or deep South and that will cut battery life also, then put sulfation to the mix because of a poor charging system or lights left on overnight or whatever, and yes you certainly will shorten the life of any brand battery.
Sorry this is so long but there was a lot to cover. If you have other questions, feel free to ask them and I will do my best to answer them.
Thanks,
Bill Howell
eCare Manager, OPTIMA Batteries, Inc.

 
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Hey Bill,

Thanks for the details. I always appreciate offcial responses on message boards like this, I think it shows how commited these companies are to us.

also.. UPDATE.. Well the problem was sparatic enough this whole time that I got caught up in other things and never fixed it..
now yesterday it offcially failed. While freeway driving, voltage dropped below 12 .. I turned around towards home. Voltage read 10.2 by the time I made it home. So now im pretty sure the alternator failed completely so that is my saturday agenda.