Hey guys, hope you can help!! I replaced my battery today and now I have a message showing Charging System Fault on the dash as well as the battery light.. Any ideas why?

 

John, this is something that can happen when you replace your battery as the ECU learns how your battery needs to be recharged after starting the vehicle. It can also come in if the battery that you put in was not at 100% when installed. I would say to start off with simply taking the car for a drive of say 20-30 miles (about 30 minutes of driving). This should get the battery back up to 100%. If you connect a multimeter to the terminals inside the engine bay fuse box, you should be able to then start the car, see the voltage go from 12.6 VDC (engine off), drop to around 11 VDC (as the engine is cranking over), rise to around 14.4 VDC for the first few minutes after the car is started, then ramp down to 13.7 VDC once the computer has determined the proper amount of recharge has been done to the battery to account for the starting of the vehicle. If you are not seeing this, then you have a bigger issue.

It may take a few starts of the car to make the message go away. the computer will eventually learn the new battery.

 

Thanks Thermo, I just connected to my trickle charger thinking maybe the new batt was not full from sitting at the store. Thanks again for the input.