Alernator Swap

[thegrouch]

Battery light came on yesterday on my 2001 S3 and after getting car home, battery is now dead.
Scanned for any codes and came up with 16946, system voltage too low. Tested across the battery terminals (before it died) and was seeing about 9.4v - this says alternator to me but wondered if could be the battery instead/as well as?
Anyone got any helpful advice/handy hints about swapping the alternator to make life easy? Obviously I'll change the aux belt at the same time, anything else worth doing?
Thanks in advance

 

[nobbybonez]

tstat is a lot easier with it out if i remember correctly...

 

[A3_130]

How long have you had the battery? It might have just collapsed or it could be the alternator at fault. Why not take out the battery and charge it in the house and if it charges up OK and holds it that should mean it's the alternator at fault. Then if you can start the engine after charging the battery you could put a multimeter across the terminals with the car running and you should see 13.5 - 14v if alternator is working. If the alternator isn't charging to begin with try increasing the revs a bit to see if it kicks in as you can sometimes have a problem which means the alternator doesnt kick in until the revs get to a certain point because of a problem in the charging circuit.