I found a cell in the battery that was very low on water. I added water and tried recharging again, but it was still putting out too little juice to crank the engine. That explains the weird voltage problems when trying to start. I found a place on the internet that says how to decode the date stamp on batteries and learned that the battery was just out of the two year replacement period by a couple of months, but was still in the prorated period. I took it to Walmart and showed the girl the date code and paid $18 for a new battery. The alternator is putting out 14.45 volts. The car is running great again, sips gas, and should make one of my customers very happy. Thanks for the help!
How to read the date code on batteries: Look at the first two characters in the code. One is a number and the other is a letter. Sometimes the number is first and sometimes the letter comes before the number. The number represents the year. 0 = 2000, 1 = 2001, etc. The letter represents the month. A = January, B = February, etc.
