My Celica has developed an intermittent fault, where the battery warning light & overheat light stay on when the car is first started. The battery volts also read low. After 5-10 minutes the lights will suddenly switch off & the voltage will flick back to a normal reading. As this has already killed one battery, anyone got any ideas? Chris Jones

your alternator is duff >

have u had the alternator checked out?

Yes Its been into a Toyota garrage & been plugged in to their diagnostics. They said the battery was dead...I knew that! So they put another one in and it worked for about a week before the fault returned.

take it to a proper old fashioned auto spark. >

well its sounds like a faulty alternator

I had a similar problem but the garage were a bit more helpful and identified the alternator problem and warned that just fitting a new battery would not cure the problem.  The new battery will get damaged if you don't change the alternator.   They supplied me with a reconditioned alternator which I fitted myself to save money - quite easy if you have the right spanners but make sure the reconditioned one has the pulley wheel attached or get the garage to swap over because it can be very hard to remove it from the alternator spindle.