Archer Volkswagen Maintenance Tips: 5 Signs The Alternator On Your Car Is Going Bad
The electricity that powers all your car's features and accessories is made possible by the alternator. If this small but crucial component stops working, your electrical accessories may start glitching and the vehicle can even die out completely. And since the alternator is closely related to your vehicle's battery, alternator problems can look like a dead battery (and vice-versa!). On this page, we'll go over five signs that the alternator on your car is going bad. When it's time to get your vehicle looked at by the experts, turn to our certified Volkswagen service center at Archer VW.
5. Dimming Lights
Since the alternator is tasked with delivering power to your vehicle's electrical features, a sure sign of a bad one is lights that flicker, fade and dim as you drive. For example, if your headlights become dimmer and flicker when idling, but get brighter as the engine revs higher, that's a sign that your alternator is underperforming.
Other electrical accessories might also stop working properly, like the radio or the climate controls. Any problem with the electronics on your car could potentially be traced back to a bad alternator.
4. Grinding Noises
Inside your vehicle's alternator is a rotor that spins rapidly to generate a steady, alternating electrical current. This spinning is facilitated by bearings. If those bearings become broken, unlubricated or otherwise damaged, this can cause increased friction inside the alternator. It'll have to work much harder to generate electricity. What's more, the bad bearings are likely to cause a grinding noise that you'll be able to hear as you're driving. If any of these other symptoms are also attended by a new grinding noise under the hood, bad alternator bearings could be to blame.
3. Slipping Belt / Bad Pulleys
The spinning rotor inside the alternator gets its power from the engine. As the engine turns, it also turns a serpentine belt -- a single belt under the hood of most modern cars that winds its way around pulleys on all sorts of accessories, including power steering pumps, A/C compressors and, of course, the alternator.
Problems with this belt or the alternator pulley can cause the alternator to underperform or even stop working. For instance, a slipping belt that's been coated with oil will need to be replaced with a new belt. Or, if proper tension isn't being maintained on the belt, allowing it to slip instead of spin the pulleys, you may need a new automatic belt tensioner. These are just a few of the problems that you could encounter with your vehicle's serpentine belt and pulleys, but our technicians will perform a thorough check to make sure all the accessories under the hood are getting the power they need via the serpentine belt.
2. Vehicle Dies While Driving
If all the lights and accessories on your car begin to turn themselves off and then the vehicle dies on the road as you drive, that's a serious electrical problem that could be linked to a bad alternator. If the alternator isn't doing its job, the battery will discharge until there's no more electricity remaining in the system. Then, the vehicle simply dies. It won't start up again, either, because there's no juice in the battery to run the starter. You'll need to seek out a jump start instead.
1. Battery Warning Light Comes On
Whether it's shaped like a little car battery or it's just the letters "BATT," a red battery warning light will illuminate in your car's dashboard when there is a problem charging your vehicle's battery. This will usually occur before the vehicle dies entirely. You might think from the nature of the warning light that it's indicating a problem with your car battery -- but it's just as likely to be an alternator problem.
The alternator and battery are directly linked -- the battery stores electricity so that your car has juice to start up when you turn the key, and also to keep the computer memory systems alive that are responsible for things like the radio presets, power seat positions and the like. The alternator keeps the battery charged up using engine power as you drive. A problem with your car's battery may actually be due to a failure in the alternator.
When you have charging system problems, head to Archer Volkswagen. Using advanced tools, our technicians can test your battery to make sure it's in good shape and repair or replace a bad alternator so your vehicle keeps running as it should.