Eurovan exhibited similar behavior. Start and run fine until.... engine would lose power. Pull over and would die. Restart would be nothing. Sit for an hour or so and could restart and could get the few miles to home. Next day things could be normal or a repeat of slow down and die. This went on for a couple of weeks. The last fail found the battery to be toast even though only a year old. OK, so new battery. All good for the next few days then the gremlins return. New battery is now no good. Determined the alternator had developed enough play that when warm would start to short creating more heat and more of a short allowing it to eat the battery. New alternator and another new battery and all is and has been good.
At 48K miles I experienced an alternator fail (car was running great at the time).
check the charging at the battery while the car is running about 2000 or 2200 rpm with multimeter. The alternator should be charging at 14 volts (give or take a little)
I just replaced the one from my 1996 Passat Tdi. 326k miles on it. The alternator still works too!
After installing it, all of the intermittent electrical issues disappeared. I'm guessing the old alternator couldn't power all of the electrical issues at once, particularly since the battery light would not come on with the higher rev's of a cold start, but would come on with the low rev's of a warm start.
Sorry for the late reply. just to go ahead and close this out, it was a bad alternator. Took the 400 dollar hit to my wallet and bought a new one. Spent a few hours yesterday replacing it. So far I've driven it about 30 miles without the battery light coming back on. Thanks everyone for the help.
When I had mine I had to replace the alternator just outside of warranty.
I've had 3 issues with the car: 3. recently - replace alternator (the car just knows I'm about to retire it).
the car is a 1996 golf gl, 5 speed, with A/C (this is relevant to the alternator spec) Original problem, car not charging and replacement alternators were no good
I have a 99.5 vr6 2.8 afp and missing a alternator ground i think I am getting 20 intermittent ground fault codes and the kid i bought the car from had a alternator put in.
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