1814 Posted March 26, 2018 Report Share Posted March 26, 2018 I'm having trouble figuring out what is going on here. My wife has a 2013 journey with the 3.6L. This is what's happening, I recently took her car to the store not 30 minutes before this happened and everything was fine. She left to get dinner and didn't make it two houses away when the car went to battery save mode. When she turned around and pulled in to the drive way she noticed smoke so turned off the car. I got up the next morning and put a new battery in, when I touched the ground cable it got hot real fast, that's when I smelt the burning. I disconnected the battery, as it wasn't right just sitting there, and looked under the hood and saw smoke coming from the alternator itself. I went to autozone to get another one as I just replaced the original one 3 years ago. Lifetime warranty. Put the new alternator on, connected the battery, everything's good, nothing's getting hot. Start the car, battery light is on. Grab my voltmeter and it shows 11.98 at the battery, ask the wife to give it some gas, it drops to 11.95. I check it at the alternator, same thing. I end up taking it to autozone so they can check it on the car, can't check it, battery is too low. Agrees with me that the new alternator could be bad out of the box. So I remove the new alternator and take it to them to test. Their tester is down, but he's going to go ahead and get me another alternator. Won't be in for a day or two. In the mean time I take the new one I just pulled off the car to oriellys and have them test it. Passed the test 3 times. I'm still going to put the new one on when it gets here, but if that doesn't work I'm out of ideas. Am I overlooking anything? Is there something else I could check? The car only has 55,000 miles on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2late4u Posted March 26, 2018 Report Share Posted March 26, 2018 well advance auto parts are not really top grade even tho i use some parts from them sometimes.my dad yrs ago was out of town and had an alternator go bad and the mech put on one from a auto store like advance with a lifetime warranty and got half way home on their trip and the van quit again well it was the alternator again so it was replaced under warranty no problem, except different mech so their was a charge for the labor then when he got home from the trip about a week later it went bad again. so this time he had it towed in to the dodge dealership and they said it was the alternator was bad , he told them the problems he was having with it and they told him sometimes on parts like that you really need to replace with the Mopar part so he said go for it. never had any more problem with it again.of course the part was a lot higher from the dealership and he was able to get his money back from the chain store for their alternator after showing them all the paperwork Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lmoore1436 Posted March 26, 2018 Report Share Posted March 26, 2018 How positive are you that it is coming from the alternator and not something in the same area? If it is the alternator then I would check the wiring. If not then I would take it to the dealership. You sound like you are pretty mechanically inclined (unlike me) and would be able to just get the diagnosis and part from them and install it yourself to save some money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2late4u Posted March 26, 2018 Report Share Posted March 26, 2018 also i would check all the wiring to and from the alt check for loose and bare wiring, bad connectors and also check the alt decoupler to make sure it is still good ,had one go bad on my daughters caravan we thought it was the alt but it was that decoupler pulley Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1814 Posted March 26, 2018 Author Report Share Posted March 26, 2018 Like I said in my original post, when I was hooking up the battery and noticed it getting extremely hot before I had the terminals tight, I disconnected it and looked at the alternator. I visibly saw smoke coming from it, not the wiring or anything. I had the hood up as I was doing the battery, so made it easier to check. Also, when I installed the new alternator, the battery didn't get hot any more, no smoke. Just not charging. I saw where there's a battery sensor. Could that tell the computer not to charge the battery? Is it possible that when the alternator went, it took that with it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2late4u Posted March 26, 2018 Report Share Posted March 26, 2018 wouldn't think so since it is on the battery but that part inst cheap either,might want to have a mech check it out the shotgun approach of changing parts can get expensive, wouldn't have any idea on how to check that part hell didnt even knew it existed till i read the other poster talking about it. jkeaton 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yyz Posted April 5, 2018 Report Share Posted April 5, 2018 That alternator is a pain in the a$$ to replace on the 3.6 although by the sounds of it you must be an expert on it now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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