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Old September 4th 05, 06:38 PM
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nashjeff wrote:
> The battery cranks like a home run hero on the cream, stays charged like a
> hurricane, and the break lights work right.


OK, that eliminates your alternator and the battery.

At a steady idle of 900 RPM I
> can notice obvious flickering in the radio illumination, not to mention the
> dash lights and the heavy-drawing headlights.


This could be either an intermittant short (not a total short, but a
resistive one) such as a pinched wire or a wire rubbing a bit on
ground. It could also be a bad ground in the circuits affected, which
instead of being a solid connection, is resistive. Like the screw or
bolt that is supposed to hold it firmly against the chassis is loose
and has some corrosion.

> I was under the impression a
> voltmeter was a type of testing equipment, not a gauge.


It can be either. It measures voltage, which in a water analogy is like
water pressure. An ammeter measures current, which is like water flow.
An ohmmeter measures resistance, which is like the nozzle on your hose,
where you can vary the restriction to change the amount of flow.

The test instrument has a bunch of ranges so it's general purpose (and
it's usually a multimeter, which can measure resistance and current as
well as voltage), and quite accurate, the gauge is made to measure
something specific and usually is less accurate.

You can get a multimeter at Radio Shack for as little as $15. Voltage
is measured between two points, usually ground and something you want
to measure, like the battery.

A shop manual probably has a step-by-step troubleshooting procedure for
the charging system. But you have a tough problem here. It's a lot
easier to troubleshoot something that doesn't work at all than
something that has a subtle problem.

I'm an electronic tech by trade, BTW. Troubleshooting is what I do.
-Paul

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