so this morning i went to leave for work...everything seemed fine until i hit the ignition..when I did everything went black..i turned the key back and power came back up slowly...hit the ignition again but still nothing...when I came home to it i tried to jump it off to no avail...so I bought a new battery..it fired right up...i drove it about 35 highway miles and everything was fine..but now that I got it home the volt guage is only showing right above the red when i turn the key on..once I start it up it seems to power up but only to about halfway on the guage(with AC,stereo,ect...off)


is this a symptom of the new battery or could it be the altenator that has a problem?

Most likely the alternator.

Test output with a voltage meter. A cheap one is $10 at the parts puppies.

Almost postivie an altenator. Autozone, Sears, Pep Boys and just about everywhere will check it for free.

There is one more easy thing to do though and it stung me once. The side post battery cables, they manner in which they clamp to the battery, they wea and don't always make good contact. I clean the H*** out of them. It never hurts and once or twice when I thought it was a weak batter or altenator, this fixed it up good!