When that occurs, your battery can’t be charged anymore with the broken alternator belt, and the battery warning light turns on. However, with repeated working, this alternator belt or serpentine belt can develop cracks over time and finally break. Run the air conditioning system, power steering, and other vehicle accessories.Spin the alternator which charges your car battery.Reason #3: Broken Alternator BeltĪn alternator belt (aka serpentine belt) uses the power generated by the engine crankshaft to: And this can negatively affect the proper functioning of your vehicle battery.Īs a result, the battery warning light can turn on to indicate that you’ve got a failing alternator, or worse, a wholly damaged alternator. If your vehicle has a failing alternator (or faulty alternator), it’ll probably produce a voltage outside the optimal range. In many cars, the optimal charging voltage is between 13.6 and 14.6 Volts. If your vehicle’s alternator is malfunctioning, the vehicle battery may not receive sufficient voltage for proper charging, or it may get exposed to excessive voltage. Reason #2: Malfunctioning AlternatorĪn alternator is a component that charges your vehicle’s battery. When either of these happens, your dashboard battery light activates to warn you of a bad battery or dead battery. As a result, the battery voltage (and battery power) generated will decrease.Īnd with a dead battery, the battery voltage would just drop to zero. This post was first published on September 23, 2012.The battery warning light on your dashboard usually gets activated due to one or more of the following seven reasons: Reason #1: Bad BatteryĪ car’s battery usually lasts between 3 to 5 years.īut, as your car battery ages, the electrodes inside it might break, or the electrolyte contained within the car’s battery may leak. So, don’t confuse that indication for an issue with the battery. If there’s a problem with the alternator, it’ll start blinking, indicating an issue. When you turn on the ignition key, you might see this indicator turn on with all other indicators once. If it is able to supply enough voltage to the battery or not. It shows if the health of the alternator. The battery indicator (the one shown in the featured image) in most of the cars I’ve seen in India is for the alternators. But what’s that battery indicator in the dashboard? Although there’s room for some false positives, it’s a good thing to have it when you can’t do a load test. The starter motor giving up and refusing to crank the engine in the first place itself is an indicator anyway.Īnd it’s worth noting that modern automobile batteries now include a physical indicator for the battery’s condition, which you can find on the top casing in the shape of a coloured eye. In other words, when the engine is running, there is no economical or simple way for the vehicle to test the battery with a load-of a starter motor-and show you an indication if there is a problem. Given how complicated enough a vehicle’s circuitry is, it’s better not to accommodate the least necessary cases like a computerised battery health check system, while the test can simply be done by opening the bonnet and load testing it manually. In addition to this, there is a problem of having additional electrical circuits and sensors to be worried about. An old battery can still power the lamp and horns, but not start the engine. Well, if you want to check the health of a vehicle’s battery, it is only useful when you test it against the load. So as long as the battery could provide the current for the torque, and the alternator is able to recharge it as the engine runs, the battery is considered healthy. And of course, the secondary purpose of the battery is to power the lamps, horns, wipers, and whatnot electronics the vehicle has. Providing that load is the primary function of an automobile battery. So to provide that torque, the load required is very high. Once you turn on the ignition, the starter motor is what provides the required torque to crank the flywheel of the engine. Learn about automotive batteries in this Geekswipe explainer and find out why most cars and bikes don’t have a battery status indicator. It’s just a question of whether it is really essential for the driver. The choice to add a battery indicator to your car/bike dashboard boils down to a handful of factors only. Not to be confused with the battery health indicator.
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