hello i have a 97 honda civic ex and i been having problem with my charging problem with my car. First i bough a battery then that died then i thought it was my system that was kill it, i bough another battery then that one died like a week later. I ended up buying a new altenator and took my audio system out. And i still keep going threw battries like its gas. I went threw 5 battries in the past 3 months. I know its not the alt. because i keep getting jumps and i can ride like that all day long ,its just when i cut the car off it won't start up. And today i had to get 2 jump and after I got the car jumped while i was driving my MPH hand started jumping back and forth and every time it did that my radio went off then cut back on.......... I don't know what the hell is going on i just thought the battery was really dead. i need help bad thanks.

 

maybe a bad ground? next time the car does it check the batt voltage. my hatch did the same thing almost a while back.....it started like the battery was about dead everytime and turned out to be a faulty ground for me.

 

where was ther ground at

 

Could it be a parasitic draw? How did the batteries go bad? The only way you could go through batteries is really if you overcharge them, but that shouldn't be the problem. If your battery goes bad again, do a conductance test. This test is good because it can test a totally dead battery. Not all places do it because the machine is pretty expensive. There may be more that i can't think of. Explain this ground thing impact.

The more i think about it, the less i think its a parasitic draw. A parasitic draw will pretty much only give you a problem when you start your car in the morning.

 

i really don't know what the problem is. Its just when i buy a battery after like a week it just die. I always need to get jumps and i just got a new altenator so i know thats not the problem. I check the wire to the alt. to the battery it was ok. I really don't know i took everything out of my car that can be suck the battery dead.

 

Check the voltage between the battery terminal when the engine is running. It should be between 13.5-15 volts.

 

you said you took your system out, but then that the radio was dying.. so you reinstalled your system? o.k. when a head unit cuts on a bump, and its not a cd skip, thats a bad wire connection. could be pos or neg. an old school test for an alternator is extremly simple, after you start your car pull the positive battery clamp off the batery, if the car dies your alternator is bad... if it runs, its good..

be carefull, with all these jump starts. this is not a myth, this happened to me, i have the scars..... all it takes is a single spark to ignite the fumes in the air from a charging battery, they explode very well... and battery acid in your eyes is no f'n joke, i was blind for a week only because i was fast and smart and found a water hose quick, the hosp still ran a bunch of crap through me eyes..
ON THE CAR BEING JUMPED, DO NOT HOOK THE GROUND TO THE BATTERY, find anything away from the battery and make that connection last, thats how most of them blow, that spark from the last connection

 

My teacher always warns us of that all the time. I've never heard of an actual person that it has happened to. I always hook it up to a ground but it sucks that you had to learn it the hard way.

 

Check both sides of your ground cable, make sure their tight and no corrosion(rust).