bad alternator?

[Xxvicman]

i have a 130A alt and im wanting to get a 280A but i dont have the money right now so im making do, anyway all music aside when i crank my car up the voltage gauge is more than half then when i drive for about 5 min the gauge drops below half, like almost all the way down. is there something wrong with my alternator? its never done that before.

i have a kinetik 1800 in the front and the big 3 was done a long time ago

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[misfit138 5,000+ posts]

Are you trying to run 2,500+ watts rms on a 130 amp alternator?

 

[Xxvicman]

no just 2000 hahaa, but without any bass the gauge goes down almost all the way after warming the engine up, but cold start its way up there in voltage

 

[misfit138 5,000+ posts]

Buy a bigger alternator, man.

 

[Xxvicman]

oh yea let me go to the tree in the back yard and pick some money off of it and buy a bigger alt hahaha jkjk....i just wanna know if the alt is goin to give out or not and if any one else has experience this

 

[select127 10+ year member]

not the same problem but my voltage randomly dropped from 13.8 to the low 12's one day. car cranked up fine and I drove to and back from work for 3 days while noticing it just dropping from the 12's to 11 to 10 until one day car finally died. i figured it was the alternator and put in an order for one.

 

[clouduz 10+ year member]

well you could always do the real easy test, take it to autozone or similar and have them test it and the battery.