Battery light coming on, bat. guage not moving...?

[Stationwagonguy]

On the way home tonight, being a dumbass and trying to conserve fuel, I shut off the van and coasted it to a stop light. Soon as I shut it off, it started making the door-open beeping at me, and the battery light came on. I started it up again, battery light went off. But then it kept beeping, randomly. At first it was just when I'd accelerate. Then it was just random. No battery light on. Then it comes on again, followed by beeping. I shut off the radio, heater fans, and dimmed the interior lights as much as possible, and the battery light kept coming on and off and occasional beeping and got it home.

Meanwhile, the factory battery gauge on the dash, which I'm just going to assume is an ammeter, never budged from the middle.

WTF is going on? What does this even sound like? I mean, I'd think the alternator, but wouldn't the ammeter show me if the alt stopped working, or just if the regulator was shot? WTF else could this be?

I'm gonna try to run to a Murray's in the morning and borrow a scan tool, but any thoughts beforehand? I've got a lot of driving to do tomorrow and no time to fuck around fixing shit, so I'm trying to judge exactly what's going on. I'm gonna guess I better carry my jump pack around, but....


It's an '01 Ford E-150, btw.

 

[steve581581]

kind of sounds like a sensor is going bad or had a hiccup but on the other hand im not sure... you may still want to scan it to get the code

 

[Stationwagonguy]

dimming the interior lights probably didnt help enough, you should make sure to turn them totally off...
By starting and stopping the engine, albeit while still moving, your not going to save much fuel, on top of confusing the basic functions of how the vehicle is supposed to work, when you key on, the belt alarm goes off until its fastened...Make sure that the belt was clicked and engaged.

There's no way to turn the dash lights completely off, they just dim as much as possible, and I wasn't going to shut off the headlights at night. The interior lights were not on.

The belt was clicked and engaged, but I'm presuming it was being used to notify me something was wrong. Who knows, though.