I have a 20006 Monte Carlo with about 210,000 miles on it. The past 3 weeks my battery life has been randomly popping on. It came on the first time, went away the next day and didn’t come back on for about 2 weeks. This week it’s been popping on and off repeatedly. The battery is good, had it checked after the first time. It’s about a year and a half old too. The weird thing is the car is starting and driving fine with no issues. There’s no dimming of lights or anything that would make me think it’s the alternator.

The positive battery post is showing underneath, the wires are. Could that be the issue? The belt looks fine also. I am perplexed at what’s causing this. Could it be a false light?

 

Could someone please help me, why is nobody responding?

 

Do you have a multimeter for testing the voltage yourself? Car off 12 volts, car running 14 volts. If it goes below 9 volts when you are starting it, the battery could be going bad. Make sure battery terminals are clean and tight. Check all fuses, one could be loose. Check all the wire connections to the alternator as well.

Have you done anything aftermarket electrical? Like an amp or alarm system, extra running lights. Just curious.

 

I went to autozone, the battery was bad. It was under warehouse so they replaced it. Checked the alternator and it’s good. The battery light is still on. I don’t know of the battery was actually bad, or something is draining it.

 

I forget what it is called, but the 2006-2007 Monte has an item strapped to I believe the positive battery cable. When it fails it presents weird issues that you would suspect to be a battery or alt failure. I know someone who had it happen to him, replaced it and then all good after that.

 

Can you reword that? Its not making sense to me.

You've got to be patient man. This is a very small forum, and we've only got maybe a couple dozen truly active members across the whole site. Of those few members, theres only a small subset that actually know about the system and a smaller subset that actually want to take the time to respond.

Thomas, in order to get the help you seem so urgently in need of, you've got to answer questions when we try to help you. This one JT asked is a very important one. To avoid just shotgun replacing everything, you need to measure what's actually going on and that's done with a multimeter for electrical problems.

Another good question we need the answer to Thomas.

I wouldnt put any faith in their diagnosis. In my experience, many who work there have no idea how to properly test a battery. As you mentioned - some will take it under charged and still run the test as is because they dont want to mess with charging the battery first.

Either way, at least you got a freebie out of it.

I agree this is a common problem spot. This is what it looks like (although obviously you'd have to make sure you get the right one for your car).

https://www.rockauto.com/en/parts/wv...t+sensor,13536


But back to JT's original point - you need to break out the multimeter and get some actual data. We're all just guessing in the dark as we have no diagnostic information here.

 

I’m not sure how to reply to individual comments here. That’s the piece that’s dangling. The battery current sensor. I’m pretty sure that’s the issue. I can’t find a diagram of how it goes though. I’m not sure of it goes on the battery terminals, or the cable goes through it.

 

I believe if you follow your positive battery wire, not far, you will find the sensor that Bumpin' included a link for.

 

You don't have to reply to individual comments, we just need some kind of feedback as to what the answers are. Its completely ok to just do a basic reply without quoting anyone to say 'yes I have a multimeter and know the basics of how to use one', or the inverse, etc.

Keep in mind that we're even more in the dark than you are. Clearly you're struggling to find the problem, but you're already leaps and bounds ahead of us on knowledge as you live with the car every day and have been involved with the troubleshooting so far. All we've got to go on is a handful of sentences.

I think JT was on a good track with the multimeter question. Thats basic troubleshooting equipment for any kind of electrical issue on any car ever made. If you have one, and know the basics of operation, we can help guide you through steps specific to the car to locate the actual problem so you don't have to keep shotgunning parts at it.