I have a 2009 Saturn Vue XE 2.4 liter. About two and a half months ago I gave somebody a jump and all of a sudden my car quit charging. I will charge up the battery on a battery charger and my car will make it maybe a whole of depending on the day the traffic and what not, before my battery is completely dead and I need to recharge it again. I have replaced the starter, the battery, and the alternator. I replace the battery three times because of the charging it on battery chargers. And then all of a sudden I had 2 jump start my car after I would disconnect the battery and charge it. Two days ago out of nowhere my car will not start or turn over.

 

1) Is your charging light lit on the dash?
2) Have you checked for a blown in line fusable link between the alternator output and the POS terminal of your battery? If the charging current spikes high enough, like in the case of trying to jump a truly dead battery or a battery with an internal short, the fusable link is designed to limit the maximum current going to your battery for safety reasons.

Check the voltage physically at the alternator output versus chassis ground. Should be about 14.4 V DC with the car running. Now check the voltage of the battery's positive terminal to chassis ground which in this case should also be tied to the negative terminal. Should also be about 14.4 volts DC with the vehicle running.

I know you cannot get the vehicle to start. I'm giving you this for reference. If the voltage versus chassis ground is bouncing all over the place or generally unstable and not 14-4ish, then you may have blown out your voltage regulator which is inside the alternator. However your alternator replacement should have taken care of that.

If the measurement at the battery matches the measurement at the alternator output, unless there is a grounding problem with your battery the alternator should charge your battery.

However if the fusible link has burned out, there is literally no electrical connection between the alternator and the battery. So as you have experienced, you are powering your vehicle 100% of the time off the stored charge in the battery.

You can only drag a battery down so low so many times before the chemical reaction that allows it to store charge becomes no longer possible. If you are quick charging the batteries, you are probably generating significant heat which will also take its toll on the battery chemistry.

So if you check the resistance between the physical alternator output and the positive battery terminal, if it is open circuit, it is likely the fusable link.

My guess for the no crank current situation is that you are trying to jump a battery that is too far gone and is storing pretty much no charge. The jumper cables are probably not thick enough as in low enough gauge to carry the current necessary, after the voltage drop through the cables, to start your vehicle. You can confirm this by measuring the voltage of the battery at rest anything much below 11.5 volts at rest will make it very difficult.

Please post back with results so that we may continue to help you troubleshoot.

 

Yes I will give this a try in the morning how ever my alternator connect to the starter and not my battery the fusible link is in between them but I don't really get where the alternator it's exactly supposed to connect to on the starter I personally think it's in the wrong spot this is what my alternator cable looks like and this is how they are. Is my alternator Cable in the correct spot?

 

That is a picture of your starter.


Your alternator has a pulley with on it. It is turned by the serpentine belt that also runs around your air conditioning compressor pulley, probably water pump pulley, and crankshaft pulley.

Picture.


Generic alternator picture


These are all in the front of the engine. The starter is usually down much lower towards the ground compared to everything else and does not rotate with a pulley.

Most vehicles have a positive terminal cable coming off the battery that goes to the following places/splits up:

1) to underhood fuse box to power computer and other stuff
2) to starter to send current to start vehicle
Also
​​​​​​3) the third is a cable running from the alternator TO the battery to charge the battery. Note that the current is running TO the battery not FROM the battery through the cable. This is how the alternator is charging up your battery.

Checking from the output of your alternator to your battery positive terminal should tell you whether or not you are getting current output from your alternator and or whether that cable between them is loose, disconnected, damaged etc. This is where the fusible link should be. Between the alternator and the battery.

 

On the 2.2 and 2.4 series engines the alternator gets its power from the starter. Both cables go on the top post on the starter. It is just a power pass through from the battery to the starter then on to the alternator.

 

Thank you for the correction, Andy.

So when starting, the current runs from battery to power the starter. A small intermittent current is generated by the alternator while cranking and travels towards the starter and battery, but it is too small a current to disturb anything else.

Once the vehicle is running, the starter is no longer powered and all of the current generated by the alternator travels through that same cable back to the battery.

I should just give up on these ecotec questions. I've still never looked under the hood and seen one. They're just different enough to trip me up. That's amazing how little progress I've made in 15 years. I do what I can and learn.

 

Derf
My battery has two positive cables coming off of it. one of them goes to the starter the other one goes to the fuse box. The fuse box has two coming off of it, the one from the battery and the other goes inside the car under the steering wheel. The one that goes to the starter has the alternator cable coming off of it and I don't know if it's in the right spot or not. But before all of this ended up happening what started all my problems was giving somebody a jump and my car ran for like 2 months with me charging up the battery every time I had to use it and in the middle of using it all of a sudden not starting one day my alarm on my car I just noticed today is not working and I think that maybe one of the problems but I'm not sure.

02 LW300
Do the words go to the same spot on the starter is my alternator in the wrong spot for the wire to be going to that be causing the problem for it not charging.

And I just found out that one of the cells all my battery have died so can cause the problem for it not starting even though I get lights when I turn try to turn my car over

 

Yes the two cables go to the top post on the starter. There is a fusible link in the cable between the alternator and the starter. If when you jump started the car months ago you touched the cables backwards, it quit charging the fusible link is probably bad.

 

Dead cell on battery causing no start? Absolutely a possibility. Very very very likely why your car will not start. That is why I had suggested you measure the voltage across the battery.

If you think about it, the cables attached to your starter and alternator have not moved between the last time you drove it and now, when it won't start.

So if the cables were not touched at the starter and alternator, they should still be connected properly.

Per my earlier advice and the follow-up by 02LW300, Trace the wire from the battery to the starter and look for a device which is not like the rest of the cable. If you cannot find it there, look at the cable between the starter and the alternator. It may be taped over to protect it from moisture but it is in one of those two cables.

 

The cable in post three obviously has a fusible link in it. It needs to be repaired or replaced then attached to the battery cable post on the starter also pictured in post number three. The cable between the alternator and the starter has never been repaired after the jump start attempt. The bad fusible link cable got connected to the wrong post on the starter some time during the component replacements. If the jumper cables get hooked up backwards the fuse protecting the alternator always blows. In the old days if you jumped a car backwards you had to replace the alternator. Now there is a fuse or a fusible link as protection. Of course my fleet of new Fords have a “non replaceable” alternator fuse in the under hood fuse panel, I have made a work around to fix this problem. No one claimed ownership of the backwards jump start but I had to replace several small fuses and then deal with the 250 amp alternator fuse.