06/23/2025
I came home from a party last night and as soon as I go to back in my driveway, the car dies. Luckily all I had to do was throw it in neutral to get it in the driveway. I put a meter on the battery and it only read 11.6v so I jumped it, got it started and then got a reading of only 12.36v droping .2v every minute. Turns out, the connection between the alternator and the battery was bad due to corrosion buildup on the terminals. The first pic shows a temp of 67.1C on the corroded terminals and picture 3 shows the alternator at over 98C. So I wire brushed the terminals, re-jumped the car and immediately was getting 13.27v and holding! Pic 2 and pic 4 reveal the drastic drop in temperature on both the terminals and the alternator which just goes to show how important clean good connections are to the health of your cars electrical system. My wife was happy to report this morning her car hadn't started that good in a long time.
