Last night my 'battery' idiot light came on.

I was doing a pretty good pull to get into traffic on the highway.

The light came on, I pulled over to check things out, by the time I got the car stopped the light was off again.

I did poke around but really what are you going to 'see' with regards to the charge light coming on?

Anyway, I realized, standing in that parking lot with a flashlight poking around under the hood with my wife in the pass seat (all those with a similar memory raise your hand) when it occurred to me that I don't know much about the electrical setup on these newer machines.

On my old 760 there was an built-in, but easily changeable voltage regulator that turned out to be the problem in 99% of the problems I ever had. They would die and either the alt wasn't charging enough or it was charging too much.

Since my car doesn't have a volt gauge, I was wondering if anyone out there has any ideas about what might have happened, and what I can do in terms of preventative maintenance on my charging system.

I'm leaning towards an 'over-charging' fault, as I just got done with a very very cold winter here in NB Canada and I never had a problem with the electrical system before. I don't know the age of the battery for certain but I believe it was new when I bought the car from a friendly mechanic in September....

Any ideas about what might be wrong?

How about the component layout? I can see where the alt is - where is the voltage reg?

How about common failures? I haven't read anything about charging system problems on this board before...