I have a 2005 Freestyle that is giving me this message. The battery has 12.5Volts with the engine off. With the engine (and alternator) running it is at 14.5Volts. If I turn everything on in the car, the voltage drops to 13.6 and stays there. When I shut everythin off, it goes right back to 14.5Volts. Someone at work thought the battery voltage was low, so I out a charger on it. When it charged to 100% the battery was up to 12.7Volts but made no difference with the message. I also borrowed a code reader from a friend but it did not find anything either.

Other than the message comming on, the car seems to be running without issue. I took the car to a local mechanic, before I started checking voltages, and they said it was a bad alternator and it would be $400+ for a new one plus $200+ for labor but would not be able to do the job?!?!

I am not sure at this point if in fact it is an alternator issue or some other glitch in the system. I kinda got the feeling from the mechanic that he just didnt want to do the job.

Can anyone help point me in the right direction on this? I want to get this fixed without spending a ton of money swapping parts, I also do not want to be stranded anywhere either.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Dave