Battery or Solonoid?

Hmmm, little confussed I guess. Took my Jeep (m38-A1) with the Buick 3.8, out for some muddling/tooling around the county on Monday. Drove it for a couple of soild hours with no problems. Drove it home and let it sit for the rest of the afternoon until evening when we decided to take it to watch fireworks. Wouldn't start. It would just click. Figured I must have shorting something due to all the water I sloshed though earlier. Let it dry out and tried it again yesterday. Still no go. Thought I would jump it and see what would happen. It started up. The voltmeter was at 12v and after a couple of minutes of idleing, it started falling off. It was about 10.5 to 11 before I shut the motor down. I had the alternator tested several weeks ago and they said it was charging at about 12. Looking at the age of the thing, I decided to replace it last night. So, got the new alt. on and started it up. Volts sat at 12v for a minute, jumped to 14 for about 30 seconds, then fell back down to 12. Now, I know that battery isn't fully charged, it can't be. Anyway, I drove the Jeep around for more then an hour last night with the volts pegged right at 12 and didn't have any problems. Of course, I did the same thing the day before and didn't have a problem until I tried to start it again.

Think it could be a bad solonoid, or something else is going bad? Driving around last night, I had the headlights and electric fan (that thing sucks juice) running and the volts were still pegged at 12v. It would dip when I turned them on, but climb back up. I just think it should be charging the battery more then it is.

Any idea's?

Dondo

 

Which alternator are you running? Does it have an external regulator? If so it could be a bad regulator too.

 

It's probably your battery. At around 1400 rpms my voltmeter jumps to 14 volts and stays there pretty much all the time. The voltmeter is an indicator of battery condition more than anything else. I'd take the battery in and have it tested.

 

sounds like the battery