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Alternator / Voltage Regulator Voltage ? 90 Ls400


sebastor

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Hi guys. I just replaced battery as it was bad. I previously had parasitic draw which i believe it was car alarm completely discharging (300mA) my battery overnight.

I have grounded alarm and alarm is no longer active (bypassed). I did test for parasitic draw and i see only 0.15 mA so i believe it's all good here from what i can tell for now.

Now when i was testing my alternator whether it's working correctly i see that under idle engine and FULL electrical load heat on high, lights on, radio on and rear defroster on my voltage shows 11.7v and when all electrical off its back to ~12.3

When i increase rpms to 1,000-1,500 rpms voltage jumps starts going up to 12.6-14.00 so that tells me alternator is working and charging during driving but i'm curious if under idle if it's working properly. I know there is voltage regulator and i wonder if under idle what it should show for this particular car?

Is there voltage regulator in 1990 LS400 that would under idle only regulate 11.7-11.9v and would start charging only when rpms are increased or is alternator weak and going bad slowly. Wouldn't want to buy a new one unless needed?

I have Innova 3320 multimeter which may or may not have (+) or (-)~1v variation. This is not Fluke so not sure what the margin of error on this device is. Or could be accurate. Not sure. It uses only auto ranging when setting on 12v testing. Thought i would be specific here about device too. This multimeter has 4.5 starts rating on amazon and supposedly is as accurate as Fluke

Thank you in advance guys for your help :)

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Yeah Seb, thats 'normal' with full electrical loading. I did a test on my LS a few years back and it did the same thing. Nothing wrong with your system, it just can't keep up with charging under full load when idling...but it begins charging again when you drive. Not a big deal. If you get stuck in a traffic jam for hours, you might want to consider cutting some of the loads but under normal driving you are good.

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