Heh; I have a 4th gen! Don't have to tell me about failure-prone Honda electrics. Yer preaching to the choir brotha! Amen! :beer:
-and for what reason has Honda not yet adopted weather-resistant type connectors across the board? One can only wonder why a 10 year old Chevy Cavalier is full of sealed Packard WeatherPack type stuff; and yet Honda....
If reading 14.3 at the battery terminal gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, have at it.
However, we're now seeing posts from people currently having no trouble, yet being scared to the verge of chopping up their harness to de-activate a significant feature of the electrical system. -without even knowing what the black monitor wire is for.
When jumping the monitor wire pin of the R/R straight to the battery results in a big drop in V, what does that tell us? -that there is an unusually large differential between V in the charging circuit and what was being measured through the harness. You have proven this with the jumper wire. You did say you replaced everything except the harness... Bypassing the monitor circuit doesn't fix the problem, just treats a symptom. Elsewhere in the system we now have a low-voltage condition. (hope it's not at your ABS computer!)
The footnoted link was good reading, if a bit heavy on conjecture. It should be noted that the "specialized" batteries mentioned, like Optima are commonly known now as AGM or Absorbed Glass Mat cells. At first AGMs were rolled in cylinders inside the battery, like a six-pack of big capacitors. However nowadays rectangularly stacked mats are commonplace as well, like WestCo.
had to chuckle from the first footnote in that article:
"Batteries: Current Designs", Mike Dale, Motor magazine, November 1985
heh. :D
Peace; and Happy Motoring!
:wheel: