1998 Pontiac Montana Electrical losing conection at times

RBHARVEY

MEMBER
1998 PONTIAC MONTANA
6 CYL
FWD
AUTOMATIC
255,500 MILES

Sometime my van will not have any power at all... CAA came the first time and when he attempted to check the battery status the alarm went off (power reconnected) when he was reaching in and under the fuse box to reach the negative terminal

the connections seem tight to the battery, and i was told maybe the ground to the frame. but if it is right beside the fuse box then it also is tight..

this happens often (once a week) but cannot figure out what is wrong. The battery is fine and it appears so is the altinator...

anybody have any insightfull ideas????

HELP

2 Replies

PJ(GTO)

MEMBER
36 POSTS

Believe it or not a lot of the time it is the connectors, these newer connectors don't look corroded on the outside but the inside or at the point of the connector to the battery will have enough corrsion built up to cause this type of problem, best thing to do is take your termanals off and look at the contact surface on both the battery and the cable conncetor, if you see corrosion just use sandpaper or stainless steel to clean these off, on occasion I have seen corrsion on the bolt inside of the connector, you can sometimes take the bolt out to clean those surfaces too, if not get them wet and put some baking soda all over them turn the bolts back and forth and then pour water on them to wash the baking soda off, the baking soda will stop corrosion due to acid built up from the battery. Give that a try.