96 cherokee sport, 5 speed manual, 4.0L, 224,000 miles.

Drove the cherokee to NAPA yesterday morning. Went to go home and "nothing" when I hit the ignition except the radio, which had reset. No prior warnings of anything. Dome light was off, head lights would not come on, everything was dead.

Undid the battery cables, cleaned them a little, still nothing. Called the wife. She came, we jumped it, and it fired right up...but it would die at low idle. As long as I kept the RPM above 1,000 was able to get home. Note that the GEN and ABS idiot lights were on ?

Got home, turned it off, dead. Charged the battery for a few hours, it then started up and everything seemed fine. The GEN and ABS idiot lights were off. Turned it off, but was dead again on start-up.

Said forget about until this morning. Charged again, tried to start, dead.

Put a battery load tester on it and it registered in the green at 12V. But it dropped to zero when I applied a 10 second load. Possibly a bad battery ? Unhooked the battery cables, it registered 12 V, applied the load tester for 10 seconds and everything stayed in the green/good zone. Cables back on, dropped to zero when tested.

Suspected a short, maybe a bad starter. Took the starter off, got it tested at NAPA but it's good.

So...possibly a short in the alternator ? I've put 100,000 miles on the Jeep in the 6 1/2 years I've owned it and never replaced the alternator so unknown how many miles on it. Possibly the ignition switch ?

New plan is to pull and get the alternator tested, but if there are other ideas, feel free to let me know.

Thanks.

 

Ya your alternator may be shorting inside, I would clean all your main grounds first though. I just posted how to test for amp draw on another thread. Check it out. Called dying!?!?!