Dash idiot lights are acting crazy

[Boostedballs]

I'm having some strange issues with my idiot lights.
When I'm driving, I get ALL of the idiot lights to light up EXCEPT the CEL.

They flicker then go back off. The engine performance doesn't seem to be affected by this.

The problem seems to be happening more frequently over the last couple weeks.

anyone heard of this???

[Hocrest]

Your alternator is on it's last legs. Get it rebuilt before it takes your battery out with it.

[Boostedballs]

the alternator would have been my first guess but it's less than a year old and my 93 Leg had no such symptoms when its alternator went out. Either way, I'll be hooking up a volt meter to see what is going on.

[evolutionmovement]

Alternator. Replace it before it kills your battery. You can't rebuild them nowadays - the parts cost more than twice a new OEM (I looked into it to rebuild my 250k mile alternator that finally had an intermittent diode pack failure). Where did you get the current alternator?

If it's not OEM, a year is more than I'd expect it to last. Non-OEM starters and alternators are good for nothing but the mechanics who get paid to replace them when the lifetime warranty covers the part, but not the labor. At least in the Subaru case, there's no reason to pay anyone to instal it, but it's still an inconvenience and a bad alternator can cook a battery through overcharging or damage it by draining it (lead-acid, especially the non-deep cycles cars use, do not like to be drained completely and the longer you leave them dead - even just 24 hours - the more likely you'll be replacing that soon as well). They're rebuilt using slave labor (or close to it) and garbage parts, which is why they're so cheap. A junk yard OEM is a better bet than aftermarket/rebuild. The OEM might be built by slave labor, too, for all I know, but at least they have a quality department and use better parts.

If it's an intermittent issue, a volt meter might not catch the problem. Also, if you go somewhere and someone test it, 9 times out of 10 the guy won't know how to use the tester properly. I worked briefly at Pep Boys and I can tell you I was the only one that figured out how to use the tester properly while others got false-positives on the alternators, leaving them to strand a customer and/or incur a new battery cost shortly after. NTB's no better from what I've seen. Happens when you pay people shit and don't train them.

Sorry for the bit of a rant there, but maybe there's something in there that can help.

[ciper]

Some alternators only fail at a certain temperature and work fine otherwise. Others only fail intermittently through vibration but work at idle.

I had a screwed scenario once with a Kragen alternator that only failed at high temperatures. This was on a Sentra but the alternator looked identical to the Subaru unit (even the mounting points). On the test bench it worked fine. The only way I was able to verify it was to run two wires from the alternator (ground and positive) to the passenger cabin and leave my volt meter propped between the dash and windshield then drive down the highway. Sure enough it would fail.

After removing the stupid thing twice I convinced the dicks to use the "on car" tester after I heated it up on the highway. It shows the voltage as low and they said "yeah it looks bad" but it could be your battery cables?! I had him connect his tester directly to the alternator which should rule out the battery cables but he obviously didnt understand electronics since it had the same results and he couldn't figure out why this made a difference. I then took the alternator off as fast as I could while it was burning hot to test it on the machine. By then it had cooled too much and showed good.

I had to finally find the regional manager and make a deal with him. I would get another rebuilt unit from them and if it didn't work I would not ask for another and buy a new battery and both battery cables.

I bet you aren't surprised to know its been working fine ever since.

[Boostedballs]

I'll just see if I can find the recipt and take this sucker back. The previous owner replaced it right before I bought it.
I'm pretty good at getting refunds when the heat gets turned up. I threaten to stand there until they resolve the problem or I tell them that I'm really good at building large signs and I have lots of time to hold it in front of the store.