That is confirmed. Battery voltage is there.

 

Replaced the 4 week old alternator with another new one and this appears to have solved the surging lights problem. The voltage at the battery is now 14.2 volts under load. The only thing that's still wrong is my speedometer still isn't working like it should. I am going to re-install the original VSS and see what happens, as I'm not too sure that the original was bad in the 1st place. If it still acts up, I'm thinking the instrument cluster could be going bad.

So what happened was when I started having the dreaded 'blown #15' fuse symptoms, I replaced the alternator w/o checking the less than 2 year old battery. As soon as I replaced the bad alternator, the new one went bad almost immediately. I checked the battery and it had one dead cell, and 2 others that were in the process of going bad; somehow it was still managing to crank the car. I was able to get a free replacement battery due to it being less than 24 months old. Tonight, other than the speedometer issue, the light surging problem has been resolved.

So I guess that when people have these symptoms that are usually related to rubbed through wires behind the IM bracket, this isn't always the case, as I had the same symptoms with an entirely different cause! I would also recommend that people have their battery checked out 1st when they start with the 'surging lights' issue. Because in my case, the bad battery destroyed a perfectly good (NEW) alternator because I had no idea that the battery was at the end of its life.

 

Glad to see you finally got the major part fixed - PITA when it keeps coming back around the corner. Is it possible the first replacement alt was bad out of the box? I've read reports from pros who frequently have alts and starters rebuilt by local auto electric guys because the quality of remans is so erratic.

 

I checked the voltage after the 1st alternator was installed, and it was reading 14.2 at the battery, so at least at 1st, the (new alternator) voltage regulator was good. The battery being bad fried the new voltage regulator. Just something else to check out before you replace that alternator.

But yes, I'm glad it's finally repaired.