Hi All, 

 

So I'm having some starting issues with a mk1 octavia estate 4x4T. The car has been struggling to start suddenly within the last few weeks. Turn the ignition and its slow and laboured trying to crank, I replaced the battery with no major difference, I replaced the starter and it was fine for a couple of days and then went back to struggling. I think whatever the fault is burnt out the alternator as it went from charging normally to charging 13.1v, so replaced that too, again fine for a couple of days, I've cleaned the earth terminals from the battery to the gear box, and a parasitic draw test seems normal at 0.51ma, and compression test on the engine read around 180...

So to summarise 

New Alternator charging at 16v

New Battery holds 12.8

No parasitic draw

Good compression in the engine

What is going on with this thing!? 

Any help would be massively appreciated as I'm completely stumped at this point... 

Is the 16 volts measured over the battery?

In that case, that sounds a lot.

 

I had those kind of numbers on my motorcycle when my voltage regulator for the alternator failed.

The battery looked like a balloon afterwards, I would not recommend it.

 

Still sounds like a weird problem if you've already changed alternator, starter and battery..

Is the car still struggling to start if you charge the battery with a wall charger?

Sorted! The new battery was duff! I did a voltage drop test on ignition and it was dropping to 5v, so took it back to halfords and swapped for another. So far everything is good and the load/charging on the battery is okay, so hopefully it will be happy for a while! Bit cautious about the 16v then, I'll have to keep an eye on it. The alternator is brand new and only 90A so should be fine but definitely don't want it ballooning on me!