myholden.com - repairs - vk alternator

After driving my vk commodore a long distance at a high speed, i noticed that my car voltmeter hung around the 16V maximum level often when the car was running. I thought nothing of it as the guages in the dash of older commodores are often not the best, and sometimes move around by themselves, so i kept driving. Then after long drives the car started to stink like rotten eggs. This was a bit annoying, i did a search on the internet and found out this was often caused by battery acid. Hmm, my battery must be a bit leaky i thought. Since the battery was only about a month old at the time i thought, maybe there is too much fluid in it or something and it will sort itself out. However the battery gradually lost all of its power. I checked the fluid levels of the battery to find it had almost no fluid.

This is when i put 2 and 2 together. For some reason my alternator had been putting out to much voltage, and had been cooking the battery, making it spew battery acid all over my engine bay causing the foul smell. There is a regulator attatched to the alternator which is meant to ensure it puts out the correct running voltage for your car, which for a vk commodore is about 13.8 volts i think. Mine must have been faulty or had a short circuit or something and been putting over 16 volts into my system. You can probably replace just the faulty regulator unit, but I was in a rush to get the car going again for work, so i just got an exchange reconditioned alternator from a wreckers.

I also had to replace my stuffed battery. I was surprised that i could claim this under the warranty of the battery. But they gave me a replacement battery for free, when i put this in, i started it up, and carefully checked the voltage meter in the dash. It was back near 14 when the car was running, which is where it is meant to be. It has been fine ever since. I definantly learnt my lesson here. The sulphur blown out of the battery was a pain to clean out of the engine bay and stank for ages every time it got warm.