alternator or not?
 

Hi!
I have a '94 Volvo 850. A few days ago, the dash lights (gas, srs, battery, pretty much everything) began intermittently flickering, thought it was the alternator and we took it to autozone to have them check the battery and alternator, both checked ok. We noticed that the flickering seemed to be related to accelerating, decelerating, or going over bumps, and google searches had found some results for a short in the dash so we thought maybe that was it and were researching it.
Then I went on the freeway and the radio flickered and knocked out, followed by the speedometer getting jumpy then dropping to zero along with the gas and temp gauges, pulled off and pulled over and when I was at an idle the engine conked out and would not start again, no clicking or anything, could put up one window at a time. So I thought, 'it WAS the alt'
triple A came and the guy jumped it and it started fine, we watched the headlights for a bit then he put his battery charger thing on it and said it was getting more than 12V and so both the battery and alt were good and then acted like i ought to just drive home, but I had him tow it anyway.
Did a lot of research in on this site and elsewhere and decided to replace the serpentine since we'd have to take it off to change the alt anyway, but the new belt didn't change anything. Been starting no problem, but flickering dash lights. Looked at as many grounds as we can find with no weirdness, but don't know where all of them are. Battery terminals test 12.7 with car off, 13-14 idling, when we turn on accessories ok for a min, then dash lights flicker, voltage drops momentarily but never under 12.5, at the same time as the engine seems to work a bit harder and there is an increase in a quiet scraping/crackling noise from the general vicinity of the belt and alternator but we weren't able to narrow down quite where.
Anyone have experience to narrow this down? Should we just replace the alternator, or keep researching?
Thanks so much for your time!
Melissa

Remove your alt, take the back cover off and replace the voltage regulator....;)

Thanks for the quick replies, we'll try this out today!

you can probably swap the regulator without removing the entire alternator, I did

Thanks, everyone!
So, we had replaced the serpentine (appreciate that video of yours as well, Robert! also, a year or so ago, your advice on getting the code for the radio) and fiddled with/cleaned some cables and grounds, but still had flickering lights. But then the next day, we took another test drive and had no more symptoms, today we drove quite a bit with no troubles.
So maybe one of these fixes did the trick and...needed some time to settle in? If we have a problem again, we'll try a new voltage regulator.
Best,
Melissa

Your post inspired me to write up a how to replace the voltage regulator:

https://volvoforums.com/forum/volvo-...15/#post388600

I think my car had the same exact issue. Problem with the voltage regulator is that it can function intermittently so your car works fine most of the time until it fails. I would go ahead and replace the voltage regulator before you get stuck like I did.

Good luck!