Every time I drive the dart with the lights on for a period of time the battery loses its power to restart the car after it has turned off (car is always running when the lights are on, never when its off. also nothing else is on when the car is off).

when I run the lights when the car idles it draws half way or just under half on the Neg. side on the Alt. gauge, turn signals as well unless any throttle is added, it jumps to the pos. side on the gauge and the lights get brighter. This is what leads me to think it might be the Alt. unless the battery is just a POS lol it has 650 cranking amps (318 engine)
The battery in the car is not old, its about 3 months old and never sits more than 2 days without being started again.

when i dont run the lights all is fine and car always starts, its just now doing this since I started doing real driving at night twice out of the two times i drove for around an hour with them on.

Thanks

Sounds like your charging system isn't working properly and/or your battery is defective (dead cell). Do you have a voltmeter you can use to diagnose the various components of the charging system?

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

possible voltage drop within the head light circuitry?

There's very likely voltage drop within the headlamp circuit; Chrysler has been underspecifying their headlamp circuits for years.

But that's not causing the no-start problem.

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I dont own a voltmeter, but one of my friends do. ill just have to wait a few days for him to retern home. The battery has a warrenty, so I guess it wouldnt hurt to replace it with another one since the other one has been drawn down twice.

thanks for the help

An inexpensive digital multimeter (DMM) costs as little as $2 from Harbor Freight, so there's little excuse these days not to have one. From my experience, their weakest point of the really inexpensive ones is that they don't like to get wet. I carry one in every toolbox.

I just had this exact same problem not too long ago. I had the battery fully charged at a shop, and they tested the battery for free. Start there. Mine ended up being well beyond the factory specs for that battery (in other words, I have one of those rare batteries that is better than what the label says).

Ruling out the battery as a suspect helps a ton. In my case, I was getting 9 volts out of the alternator. I rechecked all my grounds and it didn't change. Swapped voltage regulators. No change in my circumstance.

Swapped the alternator for a new one from NAPA and all is well.

You may have a circuit dragging it down. In my case, it turned out the alternator itself was dragging the battery down; not only was it not charging the battery, the diodes were bad. You might have something grounding out.

Try this: disconnect the negative battery cable (with a fully charged battery) and set your voltohm meter (the one you are going to buy if you plan on playing with cars for long) at 10A setting. Connect one lead to the battery, and one to the negative battery clamp. You should not have a draw of more than 0.1-0.5 at the most. If you open the door, the dome light will show a drain, but not a huge one. If you get more than that with everything off I'd start pulling fuses one at a time to see if it goes away.

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