Re: [T3] Complete Electrical Shutdown

["Leon Martinez B." <martinezl@icanet.com.mx>]

Matt,

did you check the voltage on your battery?
Did you charge your battery after finding it low?
charge it with the ploles disconnected.
DId you take out fuses one at a time to see 
what is loading power down? Did your gen light
stay on for a while when you turned the car on 
the last time it broke and worked ?

On one of the very rare occasions, my sister
borrowed my car, it broke down like this, it was the 
only time it ever broke down in two years (never
left anyone on the road) well upon checking
the car the lights were low, the radio did not
turn on, all lights were low, no turn signals.
The generator light stayed on even without the key
in the ignition.
I had a rebuilt generator and a 1200 cold cranking
amp Diehard 8 year battery. Well I thought it 
could not be the charging system but upon removing the 
regulator I found the relay in there had overheated/fused
contacts. I broke these apart, charged the battery
and evrything worked normal except that every now and then
the gen light flickered randomely. I replaced it
with a new Bosch solid state one and everything has been 
good ever sense. 

You may have a wire shorting out under the dash , I had 
this problem when I first bought the car. If you smell something 
or see some "wrinkled" wires under there , that may be your
problem. While making sure everything is turned off
you can disconnect and reconnect your battery to see if any
sparks come out of the poles. In a way this maybe dangerous to do 
if your space and battery has not been ventilated well from
the hydrogen gas after the charge so scratch this out,
leave this for komakazies like me. You can also place a
12v light bulb and it's pigtail wire between one pole and 
it's wire with the other pole connected to the car.
The battery will spark at the pole or the lightbulb will
light if anything is drawing current, in fact the light bulb may 
burnout or pop if there is alot of current draw fron your 
culprit. So scratch that too leave that to the crazies.
I guess if you have a meter you can use that in the place
of the lightbulb. Read the instructions to use the current mode
if it has one.

Check your electrical, starting from the charging system to the 
fuse box. Disconnect each wire one at a time and connect them back
even unscrew the fuse box and let it hang so you can 
check each wire . Before each wire is to be checked disconnect 
the battery momentarly then diconnect wire, reconnect battery,
did the lights and stuff look better? Disconnect battery
and continue to the next wire. Also a real biggy can be the chunky 
hot wire that goes to the starter and battery, if you have 
a hot or ground wire flopping around there you can shut your world down 
in a second. The previous owner put a Bosch relay down there
so the ignition switch  would not get the brunt of the 
power hit when car was turned on. The wires were kind of flopping from 
the solenoid on the starter , Well the hot wire to the relay was 
hitting ground and shutting car down when I accelerated
too much so I drove the car slowly when I first got
it. When my relay died I troubleshot it and found the
very junky installation. corrected this and never had problems
again.

Wiring may be painful and tedious but patience and careful 
checking will fix all wiring problems for good.


LEON MARTINEZ

1969 SQUAREBACK EFI/AUTO
SAN DIEGO AND TIJUANA





  








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