bert wrote:

In article
,
D.M. Procida writes
Tim Watts wrote:

8/10 of my votes are simply on a dead battery.

That's what I thought, which is why this battery is fairly new.
Unfortunately, despite the change of battery, the problem slowly
continued to get worse.

In fact, after I changed the battery, I realised I'd changed the battery
once before and had simply forgotten that!

So I don't believe the problem is the battery itself.

Daniele

As has been suggested
1. Check voltage at battery terminals with engine running - should be
13.8 or greater. If not then you have an alternator/charging controls
problem.
2. Second likely problem is poor connection of the heavy duty leads
between battery negative and chassis/engine block. Check these. Grip the
cable and give a hard twist. ANY movement indicates problem. May be as
well to check the positive connection also.
No point discussing other possibilities until these two actions have
been completed.

The only thing I would add is that it is possible to get a false
negative in test 1. The alternator can be producing a significant
charging current, sufficient to raise the voltage under test conditions,
but still unable to produce sufficient current to maintain battery
charge in ordinary driving. Especially in the dark or in Winter. To be
sure you need to actually measure how much current the altenator can
produce at highish revs, most easily with a DC clamp meter.


--

Roger Hayter