I pulled the battery the other day and had it checked to make sure this wasn't something simple. The battery was 12.4 volts and showing "low". The guy checking it said it should at least turn on the lights etc. I came home, and just on the chance that this was all a loose connection problem I put it back in and the car suddenly came back up, started and has been running. .
So no, the problem is not solved, but I got the car moving. I am going to pull the alternator and have it checked out to see if it is faulty, but I am also going to check over the battery cables. They are in separate pieces on this thing which I think is ridiculous. No wonder GM is in trouble - they can turn even a positive battery cable into something complicated.
I read on the internet there are 2 pieces to this pos. Cable end leading down to the starter motor and there is a fusable link in this cable between these 2 pieces. When that blows you are suppose to cut it out and splice the 2 parts of this pos. Cable back together. I knew nothing about this when I put my new battery in, and may have loosened this type of connection without even knowing it was there.
This cable travels down under the battery in front of the car to the starter. You can barely see it at all, what I could see looked fine and everything seemed tight when I put the new battery in. The car also started up with no problems and I figured all my problems were solved. That was a month ago, then everything went dead the other day.
I think someone may have done that splicing-job a long time ago before I bought the car and my moving the cable and battery around when I put the new battery in may have loosened this connection at first. With time it may have loosened up more and more until everything went dead the other day.
Then my moving the battery to take it out/put it back in this week may have tightened it enough to get a circuit back again.
So I have to look down the length of the positive battery cable leading to the starter and see what is going on in there, then I am going to have the alternator checked to see if it is Ok. All of the fuses I checked in all 3 fuse boxes were fine, nothing blown.
The last time I had anything similar to this problem was on my truck. It was a hair-line crack in the negative battery terminal that you could barely see that was causing it. The terminal was snug, but not tight enough for a good connection. The truck had power and lights come on, but it would not even crank to start. I replaced this cracked terminal and has been fine ever since.
I'll be busy and will get to this at the end of this week. Lets see what I find, but right now the car is running but I won't trust it until I check it further.
Monday, March 16th, 2009 AT 3:11 PM