Dash lights all turned on!

[David Killough]

So, I have a 95' 1HD-FT 80 Series and am in Joburg, South Africa. I was coming down from Pretoria, getting on the highway when my I suddenly noticed that all of my dash lights were on. By all I mean, timing belt, turbo, ABS, oil, water and battery lights. I hadn't done anything crazy to it. Just left a mall where my family had lunch and had the outside washed while we ate.

The vehicle ran fine, but I still had to get under the hood. For some strange reason, the voltage was showing lower than normal. I do have a fridge I run in the back, but it's running off of a 3rd battery. Anyways, I checked the engine bay and nothing unusual other than a wee hole the size of a pin head in the rubber hose going from the airbox to the engine.

I had to push start the vehicle and drove to Joburg at my friends house with little problem. The voltage began to drop and when I'd indicate to change lanes, the tachometer and speedo would jump up and down a bit.

What gets stranger is that when I stopped at a petrol station to get directions to my friends place, the tach would drop to zero when a relay in the passenger footwell clicked. It would jump back up to normal idle RPM's when it clicked again. Even when driving to my friends place, it didn't act normal and my speedo didn't either. The odometer worked fine though...

I've never had any issues like these before. Almost all the work since I purchased it from Paul Bowles in 2011. The only other person who touched it was the infamous Julian. Recent work was oil change, timing belt along with diesel filter some 1k miles ago. I've driven it around Zambia, Bots and South Africa since doing that and never had any issues.

Ideas???

David

 

[jonnyboy54321]

sounds like water ingress somewhere, bit of a coincidence?
Or a bad earth maybe?

 

[Chas]

Could be the usual problem, plug on the back of the alternator.

 

[frank rabbets]

If your rear wiper does not work let me know and I'll describe what's wrong. Had this with mine and was lucky to find the problem.

Frank

 

[David Killough]

Okay, so I lost internet not long after I read Frank's post. So I went to a garage and took a multimeter to the batteries while the vehicle was running. It was charging at around 9-10 volts. Soooo, the alternator had given up the ghost. Fortunately I had a spare. Fitted the new one on and after inspecting the original Toyota alternator, some of the copper bindings had melted. Not bad though for 18 years though! After fitting the new alternator on, I had to run the vehicle for a long time to get the batteries topped off. The lights turned off and haven't been giving me any more problems since then.

I've never seen an alternator cause all the dash lights to go like that. Usually it's just the battery light that goes on and lets you know there's an issue with the charging system. Thanks for the input!

David