OK, havin some trouble with my 95. Just replaced the battery, the old was was corroding like a **** and the car has been having trouble idling, and the lights were dim when the car first came on. Got an optima redtop and still having some irregular idle and low electrical power at idle. I think the alternator is bad. Idling at operating temp it's putting out 14.0 volts. With stereo, headlights, heater, it's down to 12.65. I took the car to autozone to have them run more comprehensive testing and the machine says the alternator is OK. 46.1 max amps out. I'm not sure why this is ok if it's supposed to spec at 90amps. The tech said that 14.0 isn't low enough to be out of spec, even though the chilton says between 14.1-14.7. I tested out my IACV and it's giving me 60ohms resistence, the chilton says 70-80. I'm EXTREMELY poor at this point and don't want to replace what isn't broken. If this wasn't an issue I would just replace both iacv and alternator. Am I stuck with this as the solution? Anyone else have similar troubles in the past?

 

check your grounds for corrosion too

 

^^^ what raine said =]..lol..had the same problem.

 

Thanks for the input guys. I spent over an hour cleaning out the battery area and negative cable of corrosion when I replaced the battery. I just took the negative cable out of the car completely and noticed that part of the clamp onto the negative post was cracked!
Got a tougher lookin clamp for $5 and cleaned a bit of corrosion off. Now I'm getting 14.4 volts at idle, only dropping to 14.3 with everything on. Sweetup!

 

werd to another happy motorist.

 

Replaced the positive clamp today as well.. was getting about 14.0 volts when i fresh started the car and it was kinda thrashed from corrosion. Idle is still a little bouncy but an improvement.