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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shoua50" data-source="post: 1236991" data-attributes="member: 18739"><p>Checking your alternator with a meter will only check the voltage regulator and not amperage. You can have good voltage but low amps so you really need an amp meter to check both. Purpose of an alternator is to recharge the battery after cranking or it gets low, it also supplies power to everything in the vehicle so the vehicle is actually running off the alternator. If your gauge is bouncing around at idle and you think it's due to a bad alternator, here's a redneck way of checking it - take your serpentine belt off and hook some good jumper cables to your battery cables and hook the other end to another vehicle with a good alternator, crank up your vehicle then crank up the other vehicle, if problem goes away then you alternator is bad cause now you vehicle is running off of the other vehicles alternator, if problem is still there u got a bad gauge. I would still look at the wiring though because the 12 volt feed at your alternator connector goes from the battery to the instrument cluster thru the cluster to the alternator. I have seen burned up clusters in both fox bodies and sn95 for no charging issues.</p></blockquote><p></p>