///// Quirky electrical problem /////

Hi all,
I started another thread thinking my starter was bad because when I turned the key I heard what sounded like the starter solenoid clicking rapidly ....
Now I'm thinking it may be something else....
I made sure the battery was charged and the terminals on the battery are clean and tight.
The weird part is, everytime (well many times) when I open the car door , my dash cam resets because power to the cigarette lighter seems to be restored to make the camera turn on so it makes its "wake up" sounds and the ssd's screen activates.
Additionally when using the power locks, the locks dont thump with authority but seem quiet and slow ...
Its almost as tho battery power is somehow low in the car so if that is the case , that could explain the solenoid clicking when trying to start
So what can cause that ? The battery charger says the battery is full.
Thanks on advance for any and all help.
Andrew

Check the ground cable to the engine and make sure that’s good, clean and tight.
That’s all I got at the moment.

csstevej said:

Check the ground cable to the engine and make sure that’s good, clean and tight.
.

Click to expand...

X's 2
Ground, bad cables or connections sound suspect. Have you done any voltage drop test? Checked voltage loss at suspect points?

BTW you should remove the other duplicate thread so they don't jumble up with each other.

Hi

Thanks for the input here's a little bit of extra information.

Originally when I heard the starter click and since the battery itself was just over a year old (relatively new) and the car has about three hundred sixty thousand miles on it i thought may be the starter had decided to die from old age or use so I bought a new one.

My friend's backyard mechanic came over to help me put it on but just before we started he suggested we tried jump starting the car

We broke out the cables and the car pretty much just started up like normal.

I took the car for a 25-minute drive not turning it off at any time so the battery had a chance to charge up a little bit ... ScanGauge I have installed from in the car show a voltage of about 13.7 during this time.

I got back to the house and shut the car off.

After shutting it off I decided to try to start it back up again and lo and behold it fired up fine.

I had some work to do so I went to gather up some paperwork and was going to drive the car for a couple more hours to put full charge on the battery... all this took about 10 minutes..

When I got back to the car and attempted to leave the car had starter click once again...

I told that to my friend and he said the battery was bad because it sounded like it was only holding a surface charge and not a real charge as evidenced by the battery going dead again within 10 minutes.

Since I bought the battery from the dealer back when I was getting the car serviced at the dealer I decided to call them and tell them I have a defective battery that needs to be covered under warranty..

The dealership said in order to have the battery covered under warranty I needed to bring the car in so they could test the battery while it was in the car.

I was willing to jump start it and bring it down to the dealership to get it worked on but much to my horror and disappointment the earliest they could see me the car and the battery was a week away

At that point I told them I could just take the battery out and give them the battery to swap it out if that would save time

They stood their ground and said the car and the battery had to be brought in to be serviced or they would not be able to honor the warranty but that I could buy a battery at full price if I wanted to have a battery without going through the warranty process.

At this point I was getting rather mad because I had never heard of having to bring a vehicle in and waiting a week just to get a battery covered under warranty ... I told them if I knew getting warranty on the battery was so difficult through VW I would have just bought my battery from Advance Auto like I always had.. ( to be honest the main reason I bought a battery through VW was because I had read on this forums that VW batteries were so good because I actually had a very good experience with the previous battery in the car).

anyways after talking at length with several people at VW and requesting to speak to the manager about the situation they finally agreed to allow me to bring the battery in so they could check it to see if it could be covered under warranty...

As it sits now they have the battery in for testing and charging.

Hopefully I'll be able to get a battery back that actually works.

The dealer probably wanted me to bring the car in so they could find some other things to try to sell me parts or service wise ....

For what it's worth though yesterday I put a spare battery that I had into the car and the car starts fine .... I just can't use that battery in the car because it's too big to fit into the battery box... I have it laying on the ground hooked up to the car via long jumper cables .... I did that just to see if there was a drain that was killing the battery overnight but there apparently is not because the other battery starts the car fine after sitting all night..

I was just posting this extra information in case it helps somebody in the future.

I'm not really sure why the relatively new battery went bad though.

Thanks

Andrew

Lots of time the brushes in the alternator have worn to the point where the alternator will not put out as much as it should.
Test the voltage out of the alternator. It should be about 14.7 charging the battery after a start.
You may not be properly charging the battery in the car due to a low alternator output or perhaps a bad ground or battery cable.

redbarron55 said:

Lots of time the brushes in the alternator have worn to the point where the alternator will not put out as much as it should.
Test the voltage out of the alternator. It should be about 14.7 charging the battery after a start.
You may not be properly charging the battery in the car due to a low alternator output or perhaps a bad ground or battery cable.

Click to expand...

Hi

Thanks for the input ...

I can't remember the exact mileage I have in the alternator but I think it was replaced around 315 k. ... as of now the car I think has 363 k but the decline in voltage has been going on for awhile now (info per scan gauge.... Iinterestingly a separate voltmeter at the usually reads 1 to 3 tenths of a volt higher than the scan gauge when touching the terminals of the battery).

Anyways all my issues seem to have been corrected by putting the new battery in.

Interestingly i did see the scan gauge read upwards of 13.9 volt even touching 14 volts after putting a new battery in.... it did drop back th o about 13.5 or 13.4 volts now ( I put on roughly 750 miles in the past couple days).

How long should brushes last in an alternator?

Are brushes kind of a VW alternator thing I don't think I've ever heard of brushes in any of my other vehicles alternators before ?

I'll try a direct to the alternator voltage check but I'm not sure I can reach way down there from on top of the car ... I'll have to see what it takes to check it .

Thanks

They don't usually last as long as you have driven your car. Check to see if they are available for your alternator.
I had an Isuzu that was very expensive and the brushes had worn to where the wires that went to then were tight and wouldn't let them have enough pressure in the slip ring to put enough current to the field for full output.
I am not sure about your car, but now a days often the regulator is not in the alternator, but rather in the car CPU. I had this problem with a Plymouth Voyager and it was the brushes again.