stupid question battery/alternator

[r3run33]

Hello this maybe really stupid question but I don't really know the in's and out's of the alternator

so this morning we had heavy snow; so lights. wipers,rear defrost,side mirror defrost, butt warmer also on and I noticed by battery display was below 14 in traffic once I stated moving the volts would go back to 14 or just above. Then stuck in traffic it would go down again so I started shutting things down etc. Is this normal does it mean alternator in trouble later etc 2006 LX 99K miles thanks for reading

 

[DirtDawg]

Did it ever drop below 12V? The alternator charging is proportional to the engines rpm. So when driving, the battery sees more charge. What you describe sounds normal.

 

[PADDO]

^this, normal. The alternator specs call for 13.2-14.8 volts @ 2000 rpm, under no load conditions. Sounds like you were under pretty much full electrical load so you'd expect to see slightly less, maybe 0.1 - 0.2 lower, on the (rough) dash voltmeter.

 

[Sandroad]

That sounds normal. The voltage will drop a bit with a heavy load like you describe. So long as your battery stays fully charged, your fine. The dash volt meter is not all that accurate anyway!

 

[nnnnnate]

I had to replace my alt last year at about 80k miles on an '07 LX. I am not as great at watching my gauges and didn't notice anything out of ordinary until the dash lit up like a christmas tree with the warning lights.

If you are concerned about it though you can take it to your local auto parts shop and have them do a load test on it while the vehicle is running.

 

[r3run33]

Thanks for all replies