Battery warning light stays on...

[routerunner]

Hi,

I'm completely new to this forum and looking for help please...

Last week I was driving my Yaris 1.0 VTTi 2006 and all of a sudden the internal light started to go on and off intermittently, then after few seconds the ABS warning light went on, then the P/S warning light went on making difficult to drive and the battery warning went on as well.

Eventually I drove home and after switching off the car an tried to switch it on again the battery just died.

I replaced the battery with a brand new one, the car started as normal and all the warning light went off as you would expect a part from the battery warning light which stayed lit.

I did seek on some advice on the net to find a solution to the problem as I started to fear it was the alternator. The drive belt started recently to make some noise which normally disappears after some minutes as well, but all the pulleys seem to rotate freely without problem.

With the car running at minimum I checked the voltage at the battery poles showing about 12v on a meter which indicates that the alternator is not charging?

Then I removed the big cable from the alternator and with the car running at minimum I measured the voltage between the alternator and the negative pole at the battery, it was showing nearly 0v.

That's it then, it must be the alternator I thought, so I found an interesting video on YouTube explaining that the majority of the alternator problems are the brushes and the video showed how to replace them, so I removed the alternator from the car and managed to remove the plastic covers and with my big surprise the brushed were nearly perfect (car has bout 40k miles).

Now I'm back to square one, what should I do? Should I replace the alternator? Is there any test I can perform to rule out the alternator? Can I check the voltage regulator off the car?

Many thanks in advance
Eddy