travis123321

On my way to work my check guages light came on and the battery meter thing went from 14 ( where it normally is) to 19.... It went away after about 5 mins... But it happend again after work, so I shut my jeep off and restarted it and i was gone... Why would this happen?

2000 jeep Cherokee sport I6

RatchetMaster10

Alternator is prob. going out

travis123321

Thanks man

RatchetMaster10

not a problem

travis123321

I drove to work today.and it did it again. How can I test the altinator

RatchetMaster10

your going to have the measure the voltage at the output wire coming off the alternator when the gauge is showing that its overcharging. since this is a over charging condition, there is really no test other than that to verify that it is in fact the alternator. this is going to be hard to do since the gauge has to be reading high when you test.

travis123321

What about one of them testers that plug into the ciggeret lighter

RatchetMaster10

not 100% sure if i know what that tester is?

travis123321

Thiers little cigerett light testers harbor frieght sell em. It's worth a try haha

highmileage

Yes those testers work for that as long as your lighter works... When the voltage jumps like that it's most likely a bad voltage regulator. Voltage should be around 14.2 ish but not above 15.

travis123321

thanks man! i did notice it was really hard to start today after work... like to start it i need to keep the rpms around 1500 for like 10 secs or it would die... but then it ran fine...

highmileage

The high voltage to the battery can cook it off and you will also need a new battery if you're not careful.

travis123321

what do you mean? i feel stupid :/

highmileage

batteries can overcharge which speeds up its ultimate demise. Other problems can be broken plates, boil over, split battery casing, blow up...yeah like that.

travis123321

ohhh ok now i gotcha haha so dont drive the jeep far until this gets fixed how would you go about figuring this out? im going to the jy tommorow morning so i could prolly pull an altinator but should it? is it even worth it :/