Alternator / Battery issues

Hey

My batter light came on in my mp5 2002 last night, and then would not start after some shopping. I then got a jump and noticed my lights were dim and interior lights were fading. So I ran to sears and had them install a weather handler gold. After they ran a diagnostic, they showed me the results showing that the Alternator was not functioning properly and that in fact instead of the normal 14 point something amps that my car should be putting out, my alternator was pushing out somewhere in the vicinity of 18 amps. I decided that by the time most of u read this I will be at the Mazda service center early in the morning to get this looked at.

Side note: On the way home with new batter and now informed that the alternator was functioning a little high, I noticed that my headlights were bright as hell, (In a damn good way,) they looked as if I had my high beams on or HID installed, and my interior lights were reddish/oragne as hell, of course HELL signifying, more than usual. So after doing a search on this forum, i see that a few people opted to upgrade their alternator to Ford's or others and commented how this may provide louder speakers?

My question is if you can upgrade to a more powerful? alternator, will this keep dash lights on and prone to fail diagnostics? and if it can be safely done, is brighter lights a normal acceptable side effect? and will this shorten the life of headlights ?

please respond, I am going to dealer in AM...


thx

e74

Thats volts chief not amps, and 18 sure as hell isn't good for electronics designed to run at 12 volts. Whats not adding up is at 18 volts the battery should have charged or atleast not drained. I assume maybe they ment 8 volts? 8 volts is to low of an output to charge the system.

Being that you have likely had a partaily cooked alternator and battery i would image a new battery would be a nice improvement. You should see my High output alternato backed by an optima battery.

The alternator can not be swapped out without draw backs. Stalling and battery lights are just the beggiing. The higher output alternator only makes for louder speakers becuase you can drive larger amps with them. Unfortunitly the main cars computer fully controls the factory alternalot and any other unit will not be compatable.

Its most likely something in the voltage regualtor. The dealer will proabalby switch the alternator tomarrow if they can.

asked my dad, and he said basically teh same thing 1st mp3 did, from his experience if lights r really bright n all itz ur alternator, the places can usually tell u whats wrong with it and all... so yeah basically ditto what 1sty(yeah i read the srt forum) said

edit: basically upgrading ur alternator means u can run more things on it, dad gave me a example with a house, a generator can put out 5000 watts at 120volts, so everything runs at 120V, the electronics in ur car, but the generator can only put out 5000 watts, now upgrade to a 20,000 watt generator, and it still runs at 120V but u can power more stuff with it, so u shouldnt expect brighter lights n all, u just have more power at hand to run say ur dvd and ps2 as well as a kick ass sound system

hope this helps