No battery charge 2004 Vue

aimeewoods

2004 Saturn Vue manual transmission. Purchased 2005 with 30K miles. Had to replace slave cylinder and ignition switch at 40K miles and leaking gas tank at around 60K miles. I was so frustrated that I was about to give up on Saturns, but then we had a span of 6 good years with few problems. Our Vue is now at 150K miles and I just replaced the right wheel bearing, serpentine belt and battery last month. The odometer light burned out. Then suddenly, last night, my battery light intermittently comes on. Took her to Autozone and altenator/battery both checked out fine. We were 60 miles away from home so we decided to cut our trip short and turn around. We made it 45 miles and the entire dashboard lit up (ABS/traction/service light). The battery died and we had to have her towed 15 miles home. Now our Vue obviously won't start because the battery is completely drained. I'd prefer not to spend another $1,000 figuring out what's wrong after just dumping $800 on the other repairs. I've come down to either the BCM... a bad ground wire to battery... or possibly a bad altenator (last resort). Just extra info: There's a burning scent (like burnt cheerios) after an extended time of driving and the engine "jogs" when I first start her up every now & then. It seems several others have experienced this with Vues from 2003 - 2006. What have your solutions been? (other than just getting another car - which it seems time for)

elias

isn't bad alternator the most likely explanation here? needs another new battery now too probably. bad ground to battery is a great guess too, is it corrodend, have you paralleled it with a jumper cable to see if that improves symptoms?