Wife called me up on the way home from work and said that the gauges on the van were flickering and the lights were going on and off. The radio which is an aftermarket Kenwood with a LCD screen flickered on and off. She came home, the van was running and she shut it off. At that moment everything was dead. Just like a dead battery. In fact if I am reading the volt meter right it looks like the battery is dead. Question is could the battery get killed that fast (about 20 minutes of driving) if the alternator was bad? Could anything else cause the battery to go dead? It is a new battery less then a year old. I have not had any issues with it before and there was no warning as far as the alternator light going off before this happened. Any suggestions? I am going to swap batteries in the morning with the one out of my other cars. How and where do I test to see if the alternator is bad if I get it running? Thanks in advance!
RickMN
06-29-2007, 07:20 PM
Dirty battery terminals, bad ground. Clean terminals, clean batt neg to body, batt negative to engine, engine to firewall. While the terminals are off, check again for voltage. If you get a reading with the terminals off, then you definitely had a dirty bat cable issue. And yes, a battery can go dead in 20 mins, especially if you're running the A/C. To test for alternator once you get it running, look for higher voltage. Turn on headlights and blower motor and rev engine to 2000 rpm while testing. You should see at least 13-14 volts. But if you think it's bad, make sure you have it checked by the parts store first. The voltage regulator is inside the PCM and you could possibly have a wiring problem between the two.
97GCES
06-29-2007, 11:05 PM
Update. In fact it seems to be related to the positive battery cable. What is odd is that their was not much at all corrosion build up on it. Could the issue be in the cable and cleaning the end just helped it temporarily? I am going to take the van to the shop tomorrow just to have the electrical system checked to be on the safe side. As crammed as the motor is in this thing do I stand a chance of changing out that positive cable myself or should I just open the wallet and let the shop do it? Your input will make a huge part on whether I decide to dive into this myself or not. I replaced the battery cable on my kids Ford Tempo however I had much more room to work with. Thanks!!
RickMN
06-29-2007, 11:29 PM
If you remove the whole air cleaner and ductwork, you'll see that replacing the cable isn't as bad as you thought. I would wait though to see the results of the charging system checkup. I know I sound like a broken record when I talk about cleaning batt terminals and grounds, but it is SO much more important these days when everything is run by the computer. My favorite story is about my friend's son's Ford Taurus. The car wouldn't start. The door locks kept locking and unlocking by themselves. The alarm system would go off whenever it felt like it. The dash lights blinked on and off. The son swore that he had MAJOR electrical problems. He called in a panic. I told him to clean the battery terminals and grounds. He thought I was being an old fuddy duddy. (I am old, but I'm not a fuddy duddy) In fact, I told him I wouldn't help him until he did that. He grumbled but resigned himself to paying that price to keep me happy. He called 30 minutes later in total shock. He said that he cleaned the terminals and put them back on. The car started right up. The craziness with the lights and locks stopped. That was 10 months ago. He hasn't had a problem since. the moral of the story is: All you need is enough corrosion resistance to lower the input voltage into the computer below 9.6 volts and things will get crazy. Or, get a corroded ground where current cannot complete its path and it WILL find ground where ever it can--even if it has to backfeed through another circuit. Let us know the results of the charging system test.
97GCES
06-30-2007, 11:29 AM
Thanks again Rick. The auto shop is full today and it is raining so I am going to tackle the positive battery cable myself. I can follow it and it appears to be buried in a larger harness. Would it hurt to run a new one outside of this harness? I can wrap it with a new protective sleeve and use tie downs to run it along the bigger harness. I wonder how long this thing is.
RickMN
06-30-2007, 12:55 PM
A new cable in a new sleeve that's zip tied down would be an acceptable fix in my book.
