My voltage meter has been fluctuating between 12 and 14 volts. My stereo has been cutting out for no reason. The car has been doing some odd things electrically and I have been looking at all the wiring and have found nothing wrong. While doing some engine cleaning, I noticed a frayed and corroded ground wire. Didn’t look too bad and from what I saw it was a secondary ground for the alternator. It went from the alternator to the engine. On my day off this week I did a bunch of things, Electric Fan wiring cleanup, had the tires rebalanced and a nail pulled from one tire and repaired, wired in the VDO temp gauge and while I was in there I decided to fix that frayed ground wire. I used a 10 Gauge piece of wire. Put ring wire connectors at both ends and put heat shrink over the ends. Attached it to the alternator and fired up the engine and the voltage meter jumped to 14 volts. The stereo amplifier no longer cut out randomly and all the electrical gremlins were gone! That one little ground wire was causing the variation in voltage.
