[jbernielh]

the drawbacks to having a voltmeter
I'm driving the wifes 2018 premium II the other day and see the voltmeter fluctuating.. sometimes its just over 14 and then it drops off to about 13 (the scale on the meter doesn't compute when you look at it).. when I get home I put my meter on it and it reads 12.7 volts.. hmmmm must be a problem.. take it to the dealership and the service mgr says the new cars don't operate like we're used to.. no 14 volts all the time.. he asked if I'd had any battery issues with slow crank or anything.. nope, none of the that... according to him they're trying to reduce the amount of power loss from the engine to turn the alternator.. apparently in some situations on the bigger vehicles it can take 5 hp from the engine to turn the alternator so they've devised ways to reduce the drag from the alternator..

anyone else watched the dancing voltmeter?

guess I'll find out soon enough if he's right or not..

Bernie

 

[NormT]

Not uncommon as our 2016 Acadia Limited does that on the highway after many hours of driving, sometimes it rears high and sometimes low.

On our 2016 Envision 2.0T if above 35 mph or so and lift off the throttle DFCO(deceleration fuel cutoff will happen) where the fuel shuts off while coasting for better fuel economy for us coasters. Most GM cars have done this for over a decade.

You'll find the rear AC fans speed up while in DFCO as the battery is being recharged by the engine. Go to throttle and everything is back to normal.

 

[jbernielh]

it probably does the same on my 2018 Denali Canyon, but it doesn't have a voltmeter so I never see it.. it's the old "to much information is a dangerous thing"

Bernie

 

[TSS]

it probably does the same on my 2018 Denali Canyon, but it doesn't have a voltmeter so I never see it.. it's the old "to much information is a dangerous thing"

Bernie

So true. Or as my dad used to say, a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous.

I installed an Aeroforce auxiliary gauge in the Lincoln so that I could monitor turbo boost and back pressure. It also gave me access to a whole host of parameters that I didn't even know I might be interested in (ie. knock KR, etc). Once I started watching all of the numbers for various parameters, I found myself beginning to worry about things I'd never thought about worrying about before. So I stopped looking at those gauges and just made the whole gauge turbo PSI. That was six years ago, and everything is all good. The voltmeter on the Envision kind of reminded me of that as well. I found myself really trying to monitor it in the wifes car...... particularly during the auto stop start function. Now something I would have liked in the Envision is a turbo gauge......PSI (and negative PSI) tell you a lot about how a system is functioning.