Since you're in a hurry, just replace the battery cables, and of course
clean the locations where they connect completely. If you want to spend the
time to track it down exactly, read on:
If your interior lights aren't coming on, there's no point in suspecting the
cables that go from the starter relay to the starter, since they are
completely independent of the body feed.
Your problem has to be either in the battery cables or their connections,
unless something has gone wrong at your bulkhead connector or possibly one
of the fusible links. You can bypass all of these items, one by one, with a
separate piece of #10 wire until you get the interior lights to come on,
then you'll know that the last thing you bypassed was the culprit.
Cables can develop poor connections inside the cable ends without any
external sign, and so can any bolted together connection, such as the one to
the block ground. You an also check for this with a test probe that will
punch through the insulation and read the voltage in the copper wire inside
the cable. The way to do this is to make sure you have a good battery, turn
on a moderate load in the car (I like the headlights, because they pull
enough current that a poor connection will show up as no or very dim lights,
yet there is very little in the way of other hardware in the circuit), then
measure the voltage at the battery post itself (reading will be 12.5 plus),
then measure about 3 inches down the length of the cables, probing first one
cable with the other end of the meter on the opposite post, then reverse
the probes (switch the meter to read negative voltage), any difference will
tell you how healthy the connection is at the top of the cables. Then do
the same thing at the other end of the cables, measuring right at the
starter relay post and engine block (if things are bad, you won't see much
voltage there), then move up each cable back toward the battery a few inches
and probe through the insulation. You can track down exactly where the open
or nearly open circuit is, step by step, and this way you will know that you
are fixing the right thing.
Let us know what it turns out to be, if you do all this.
Dick Benjamin
----- Original Message -----
From: Rog & Jan van Hoy <vanhilla@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 11:29 PM
Subject: IML: electrical woes
> Gang--- I have a "lesser" '66 MoPar that we tried to get
> out tonight to take to see Leslie at Rhody Days.
>
> Turned the key and got one weak "klunk," then no current to
> anything. Jumping didn't help, new battery didn't help,
> there's no current to anywhere. Even the interior lights
> won't come on. The cable ends are clean and tight on the
> battery. The car ran fine when parked six months ago, has
> not been used since.
>
> What's your best long-distance assessment? Could there be
> something wrong inside the battery cable, maybe at the end?
> Could the voltage regulator cause this symptom? Fusible
> link? Short or open in the starter? Where to start
> troubleshooting?
>
> --Roger van Hoy, '55DeSoto, '42DeSoto, '66Plymouth,
> '73Duster, '81 Imperial, Washougal, WA
>
>
>
Back to the Home of the Forward Look Network