Thanks for clarifying this for me everyone. I’m a diesel technician by trade & 13.5V output under load is what we believe is ideal alternator output on our rigs. Granted our rigs have 4 batteries connected in parallel vs regular cars with only one battery. But I was also taught in tech school that alternator output needed to be at least 1 volt over the battery’s voltage in order for the battery to take a charge. Have I been working with the wrong principles all this time? Or does this not apply while a load is being applied to the charging system? For awhile when I was supposedly troubleshooting what I thought was an issue, I began to think if this car had a direct signal from the ECU to the voltage regulator to turn off the alternator if the battery was fully charged. I thought about this because the last generation of Freightliner Columbias & Century’s with the last generation of Detroit Diesel Series 60 engines have such a feature (and if the signal wire isn’t reattached to the alternator, the alt will overcharge the batteries & burn itself out on those trucks).
Now that I know this is a non-issue I will move onto other parts of the car that need attention. I have this real awful clunk coming from the front end that is driving me insane. I think the shop that installed my engine mounts didn’t install them correctly or didn’t use proper torque specs. I suspect the problem to be the engine mounts because the clunk comes from the center of the car, it clunks randomly on both smooth & bumpy roads, & it also clunks whenever I turn the wheel from left to right & vice versa while the car is traveling at low speeds. The car has also recently developed a sort of jerk while I’m stopped at a red light. The first time it did it I thought I had been rear ended. Gonna take a look at the transmission, I’m thinking it is disengaging & re-engaging because either the shifter lever is pretty loose (gear indicator light on the dash will illuminate intermittently because the shift lever is so loose) or the ATF level could be low. Time to go back under the hood & get dirty this week.
Thanks again for all of your help, guys! I’m very glad this site exists!