My car has been running pretty decently now but one of the last issues I'm having is that when I'm at idle (900-1,000 rpm) at a stoplight or whatnot, my dash lights flicker a little bit (noticeably, but I don't feel like it's about to croak on me or anything). It starts to flicker even harder when I turn the A/C on...

Concerned, I read a few articles here where people suspected the alternator and recommended having adv. auto or someone run a free battery and alternator test. So that's what I did this afternoon. Here were the results:



Basically what the guy said was "looks like your battery is great, above rating actually, which is kind of weird.... but good I guess." I was a bit skeptical of this not-so-confident/knowledgeable response...

We then proceeded to the alternator/charging system test. After we got those results back he said "yea... looks like you have some sort of voltage issue or something... it's fluctuating out of the acceptable range so it looks like you may have an issue." I didn't really know what to think of this response.

Does anybody have any additional insight/advice from these results?

Thanks!

 

The data shows that you have about 0.25V ripple - caused by a bad diode in your alternator - (I measured mine and get 0.021V ripple).

You can get the parts to repair your alternator from Honda - not difficult if you know what you are doing. Otherwise big $$ for a new alternator, or unpredictable quality for rebuilds.

 

I guess the part I'm looking at is 31127-PCX-J01 ?
That son of a gun is $172.04 before shipping from hondamajestic!


Is there a way I can cheaply replace the diodes or something myself?

I kinda feel like this is an extremely similar situation to where I was told I need a new power transistor for my '03 civic ($42 before shipping from HJ) since the blower motor wouldn't turn on nor kick on the A/C due to overheating (thermal cutoff transistor blew in the unit). I was able to buy a thermal cutoff transistor for $0.75 shipped, cracked the power transistor heatsink unit open and soldered that puppy in. Worked like a charm and didn't compromise anything else in the car as it was a direct replacement of an original part.

Is there a similar work-around for something like this, with the diodes?

 

I would be interested in a solution like this too. Looking forward to peoples comments or your findings.

 

I also have the same flickring issue, interested to find out what it takes to fix this

 

I had the same issue, grabbed an old alternator my friend had and its been perfectly fine ever since, no need to replace the part for $$$. I figure you can buy 3 or 4 used ones before you're even breaking even on rectifier, which will most likely fail again anyway.

 

I don't believe there are any cheap work-arounds, but I can tell you that I had this same exact issue with my car for over a year, I finally researched it and bought the A/C Rectifier, swapped it out and it completely fixed the problem. There's also a test in the FSM where you can test the diodes in the rectifier with a multi-meter to see if they're bad, I think almost half of mine were toast if I remember correctly. You could buy a used alternator like someone else said, but there's always the chance that they had the same issue.

 

Well I think what I will do then is go ahead and get the rectifier from Honda Majestic.
But then I'll go to town on my broken one and see what I can do and maybe do a nice DIY out of it.

However I wanted to gets y'alls opinion on this ebay alternator I found: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Alternat...f1bdbe&vxp=mtr

Do you think this would be a reliable alternator?
The seller has > 1 million reviews at over 99.3% satisfaction.
And getting a little more interesting, do you think I could buy that complete alternator, take out the rectifier in that and swap it into my OEM one?

Thoughts?