2005 Ford Freestyle Question: Check Charging System Light

Sounds like a bad alternator. Check the battery connections are clean tight and secure, Turn on the ignition switch to the on but not run position do you see an icon on the instrument panel representing a battery, if you do not see this battery icon the alternator is not seeing power to allow it to charge. Start the engine does the battery icon go out. A more complex but good diagnostic test is checking "voltage drop" on the battery ground and power cables. You can find a video on how to do a voltage drop test on youtube. Put a volt meter across the battery terminals with the engine off, at rest the battery voltage should be 12.6 volts if the battery is fully charged. Now get a friend to start the car while you watch the voltmeter, the voltage reading across the battery should read approximately 14.6 volts if the alternator is charging correctly.

got 2004 ford tarus change the alternator and battery and the lights still comes on check charging system

Same thing just happened to my 500 today. I put a new battery in it and the Battery light goes on and off. And I get a Check Charging System message. Update: Now my car is dead. : (

I had the same problem and would periodically have light dimming. Turned out to be a corroded wire between the battery and alternator. Took several trips to the shop for them to figure it out. There are only 4 wires though so once they look it's not that bad to find.

I've had the same problem for awhile and just found the solution: The voltage regulator!
This one was very hard to troubleshoot because technically there is nothing wrong with either the alternator or the battery. Let me explain...

Like yours, my battery is fine, the alternator is putting out 14+ Volts while the light is on (verified by a cigarette lighter volt meter) and the battery holds a 12.5 volt charge and tests OK under load.

First we replaced the alternator with a rebuilt unit and it made no difference. My mechanic called around and learned that rebuilt alternators often did not cure the problem, but new ones did. We replaced the alternator with a new unit and the problem went away. Here's why:

The Ford charging system is fairly high-tech. The Powertrain Control Unit (PCU) commands the voltage regulator in the alternator to deliver the voltage it wants by way of an electronic signal on a line to the alternator. The PCU then verifies that the message was received by looking for the same signal to come back from the alternator on a separate line. In our case the voltage regulator was not sending back the confirmation signal and the PCU lit the light because it suddenly didn't know what the alternator was doing.

The interesting (and frustrating thing) is that the rebuilt unit did the same thing. I can only conclude that some (many?) companies that rebuild these alternators are not testing for this function and so many units that had failed are returned to the field in an un-repaired condition.

I'm also frustrated by the fact that the actual alternator is fine. It works great. Rather, a secondary function of the voltage regulator which probably costs $5.00 stopped working and ended up costing me the price of a new alternator.