so last night i was driving around and noticed that my water temp gauge would move up every time my sub would hit( it has never really worked, it just goes to the middle when i start my truck and occasionally will bounce around) and i noticed that my headlights would dim too (150 watts shouldnt do this) then my truck straight up died and nothing electrical worked, no noise or anything when i turned the key. after a few minutes everything would come back and it would turn over and start but immediately die, my friend hooked up jumper cables for a several minutes and it started and ran fine for about 15 min then died again. we went and got annother battery from home and it made it home but everything would shut off when i pushed in the clutch but would come back on when i droped the clutch. on my way home my tach and water temp were bouncing up and down.

i looked under my hood at the wiring and noticed that there were 2 grounds disconnected, one comming off of the battery and annother one on the other side of the engine, which i have no idea where goes, i will try to post pics of it later. so would this be a bad alternator or do i have bigger problems? I rebuilt my engine 600 miles ago and am not positive every wire is in its right place

 

it could just b the grounds

 

The one from the battery....where is the other end terminated at? And the one on the block...is it on the passenger side?

 

sound exactly like an altenator to me.
the ground goes either to the block or the fender, probable the fender.
connect those and double check

 

it goes from the block to the battery to the fender, but it is broken from the battery to the fender, yes that one is on the pass side

 

hmmm, i had noticed that small wire was broken on mine a while back. i never noticed anything unusual either before or after i replaced it. maybe not having a kick *** stereo made the difference.

lee

 

so i dont know what the hell was wrong but when i went to take it down to the shop it ran flawlessly and the same on the way home. my only ground wire is a tad bit melted so i think that might be it and its just perodically having some problems, but i hooked up another wire that i believe was a ground and am going to fix the one off my battery tomorrow

 

Sounds like you just have a bad connection to the battery. I have had the same thing happen. Cleaned up the posts and such and everything was good. I have found that any of my Toyota trucks don't like to run on just the alternator, this does wierd things.