Can anyone tell me what would cause CHARGING SYSTEM FAULT to appear. This happened to me while driving normaly today with the A/C on. The volt meter was at 13 and constant. Should I replace my battery? It has never been replaced. I do have an GMPP but I dread taking my car to a dealership if I can help it.

Any insight would be helpful.

:cheers:
charlie y

 

ttt

 

I periodically received a Charge System Fault message on my '99. The weird thing was that it never stayed up until I hit reset. The message always disappeared by itself.
When I first got the message (about 2 months after I bought my car new with only 5K miles on it), I took it to one dealership and they couldn't recreate the problem so nothing was done to fix it.
I later continued getting the error message occasionally. Finally, I took the car to a different dealership for some other warranty repairs at approx. 25K miles. I also told them about the "Charge System Fault" error. They immediately said it was probably just something common (they've seen the problem before) and it's really easy and quick to correct.

Well, when I got the car back, they said that it wasn't what they had originally thought. They had to replace the generator/alternator because there was a bad diode pattern showing up. It was what triggered the error, they said, because the alternator wasn't putting out enough charge.

Well, all was well with that problem until about a week later when my entire car died in a parking lot.

I had to have my car towed (on a flatbed) to the same dealership (since they were the one's that had just worked on it previously).

The latest problem was cause by two things (related to the other problem, I'm sure)
a) my power lumbar support was creating an unusually excessive draw on the battery that wouldn't always turn off
b) my battery completely failed and started leaking acid

Have them first check the battery.

Good luck!

 

Which Optima should I buy????

 

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