This is a weird one...Last night, I'm driving home from work via highwayand the see the battery light, brake light and door indicators all start to flicker simultaneously. At first it was very little, but after staring at my dash, I notice the three red lights were beginning to flicker more and more. Pretty soon, it was happening so frequently, I thought there was a massive electric shortage.

I drove for a little while longer and I begin to notice the light level begin to dim (dash lights, headlights) almost like the battery was on its last cell and about to die. Pretty soon the ABS light comes on and remains on. Shortly after, all the gauges go dead. It felt like the ECU was shutting down each non-essential system at a time. Well..1/2 a mile later, I suppose the plugs stopped firing and the car pretty much died...now here's the weird part...

I started to pull over on the shoulder and slowed down...as I slowed down, the car seemed to almost recharge itself. The gauges all jumped back to life. Headlights went back on...etc.etc. Almost immediately, I'm thinking its probably a faulty alternator or simply the battery is just worn out. I go home and the next morning get a dignostic done which forces me toreplace the battery. Alternator checked out fine. Needless to say, theproblem isn't fixed. Tonight its even more noticeable. When I accelerate, the dash lights start flickering and power level dims. If I maintain speed (around 40mph) with minimal acceleration, its not so bad but still noticeable.

The feeling I get is that the car is draining too much power from the battery and the battery isn't able to keep up. I know there was a factory recall on the ignition switch..but this doesn't seem to be the correct fix. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

Sounds like a bad alternator. Is it making a whining niose also?

 

Hook up a volt meter the the battery and run your own long lead extensions so you can watch the meter from inside the car or buy one of those cheezy volt monitors that you plug into your cig lighter socket with green yellow and red LEDs in it, you could even be overcharging???

 

I see that you posted the info, but please add a proper signature.

How was the alternator tested? If you pulled the positive battery lead, this will not test the rpm range that you are exxperiancing problems. To look for a short, turn the car off and put an ammeter on the battery hot lead. There should not be more than a few tenths of an amp running through to maintain radio memory and the clock and any other systems that need standby power. I'd expect that the alt is bad and has basically killed the battery as well. The battery has a chance to be salvaged if you can get this fixed quickly. I have basically the same car and on mine, the connection from the alt to the battery fried. You don't have the right symptoms for that, but it could be possible, especially since it happened to me on a 6th gen V6.

Keep us posted!

 

Sounds like a bad alternator to me too. I am also interested to see how it was tested.

 

All the tests were done at Pep Boys down the road. I'm thinking about taking it back to the dealership and having them look into it. PepBoys told me that I should have it brought in and have the master tech do a 2 hour diagnostic on it.[X(]

 

No offense, but PepBoys sucks. Please don't take your Honda there. Even their "master tech" probably doesn't know crap about Hondas.

 

LoL, any suggestions on a good shop or should I stick with the dealership?

 

Whip out the Yellow Pages and look for a Honda Certified shop. That's how I found the one I took my car to have the t-belt changed. They are cheaper than the dealership.

 

Thanks for the sig...... for a shop to be recommended, we need to know where you live. I know great shops in NJ, but if you're in Cali that doesn't help you. They likely hooked it up to a Snap-On charging system tester ..... takes about 20 minutes and it has a loading system to see what happens when they pull a lot of power from the alt. This test could have been done at idle speed only which may still camaflauge the problem. Have they tested it and reved the engine while monitoring output? Also, check the grounding for corrosion.