[Thurazor]

I'm not exactly sure where my problem lies because it's somewhere in my electrical system and troubleshooting is a bitch. Anyway, occassionally my battery will cut off if my car's been sitting for awhile, especially under cold or damp conditions. And sometimes when the battery is on when I go into the car, as soon as I turn the key you hear a *click* and the battery cuts off. If I'm hearing a click I would assume starter, but I don't see why it would keep cutting off juice from my battery. Every time it does that I have to pop the hood and disconnect and reconnect my negative terminal and eventually it will finally turn over and start. Another thing which may or may not be related, my fuse for my brake light has blown 5 times in the past month.

All this happened after an incident in which my positive terminal of my old battery connected with the hood and stalled the car. I had smoke come out of the engine and at the time everything appeared ok, but a week later I started getting the weird battery problems. I replaced the battery, thinking that maybe just one of the cells was dead, but it's still doing it on the new battery too.

 

[iceccool2]

Sounds like a short.

 

[Rah]

Sounds like the connections at the battery to me. My POS terminal connector somehow got out of shape over the years and was loose. This would happen, I'd just hit it or twist it and it'd fix it. The same thing happened in my Fiero, GM has their side-post terminals, but the guy before me had regular posts with adapters. It'd try to start it (i.e.: max power drain) and it'd click off. Hop out, jiggle the cable, everything's back.

 

[Thurazor]

Sounds like a short.

Could you elaborate a bit more? I'm a bit daft heh.

Rah, I'll look into replacing my connectors. I have noticed that my connectors and terminals on the battery seem to be worn/charred a bit from what looks like too much juice. Dunno if that's just normal and I just haven't noticed it until now.

Anyone else have any guesses?

 

[Rah]

If nothing else, take the connectors off, give the terminals and connectors a good rubdown (wire brush or similar) and see what it does...

 

[iceccool2]

Not daft, just uninformed. Check the wires and make sure there are no holes in the insulation that are touching bare metal. Check the grouding strap, and DEFINATELY clean off and even possibly replace the terminals if they are old. You can get a free charging system check at PepBoys or Advanced Auto....you might be able to find something out from their diagnostic.

 

[*GT]

So it cuts power to everthing, or just the starter? Sounds like a bad connection. Mine would always do that (bad connection to starter) after sitting for a while, you get corrosion/shit between the conectors, and it sometimes connects and sometimes doesnt. Just try taking all the connections off, and going psyco on them with a wire brush it should do the trick

 

[Thurazor]

I'll try that out. For the past few days the battery has had a little power, just enough to dimly lit a few lights.

 

[brody_martin]

IT sounds like to me that you have a battery problem and a problem that started from the pos battery cable hitting the hood. Did you ever find out where the smoke came from? I think that a wire burned when you had the short circut and it is cutting out when you put a load on it. I would really check the pos + cable because that is the wire that the short occured on.
The brake light fuse thing could be being caused by the pos + cable but I don't know. How long has it doing this. Does it do it right away or just once in a while? What size of fuse do you have in it?

 

[Thurazor]

IT sounds like to me that you have a battery problem and a problem that started from the pos battery cable hitting the hood. Did you ever find out where the smoke came from? I think that a wire burned when you had the short circut and it is cutting out when you put a load on it. I would really check the pos + cable because that is the wire that the short occured on.
The brake light fuse thing could be being caused by the pos + cable but I don't know. How long has it doing this. Does it do it right away or just once in a while? What size of fuse do you have in it?

I never found out where the smoke came from. It was coming out of the upper driver side of the hood, but that still could have been blown around by the fans, so I'm not sure. The brake light issue happened about a week after the cable hit the hood. Since then the fuse has blown roughly every 5 days. It's a 15.

Finally had time today to diddle around with the car and I hooked jumpers up to my bros car. I immediately tried starting my car and It took a few seconds to turn over but it did turn on. Once it was going I checked the voltage gauge and it was reading roughly 14.5, which seems fine. After I moved the car to it's winter storage spot and shut it off I tried turning it back on for the hell of it. It did that click thing, but wouldn't turn on. I noticed each time I turned the key the voltage gauge changed how high it went. First it was at 10, then 8, then 6, then on the fourth or fifth time it cut off the battery totally and wouldn't read anything.

 

[dreadie]

check your battery and terminals, take it to any auto store and haev them checked out

 

[cbatters]

Bad connections and/or dead battery.

Either take it to a battery shop and have them test the battery/alternator or spend the $3.00 for a hygrometer and test it yourself.

(The fact that the voltage jumps up to 14V makes it sound like your alternator is probably OK)



Clint