bseries_ben

So of course, now that I've had my car for sale for months and finally found a car that I want to trade for, my car is acting up. I know it's something stupid but I've been unable to figure out what's going on so I'm hoping some of you have some insight as to what the culprit might be. Here's the deal:

First of all, the car sat for 8 weeks prior to all this happening and ran fine before I stopped driving it. My car will randomly shut off while driving or not start occasionally- the tach (digital) drops to nothing, and all my dummy lights come on in the cluster but the car's dead.. I still can use turn signals, radio stays on, etc. but the motor shuts off. I'll have to pull it off the side of the road, wait 5 minutes and it'll usually start back up. (This has happened about 8 times in the last week) Three days ago, I went to start it up and it wouldn't start. Figuring it was the battery, not the alternator (since it starts back up typically after shutting off) I took it to advance and sat it on their charger for an hour and took it back home, car started right back up. It's been good since then until tonight when, after I had been cruising for about 30 minutes, I pulled into a parking space at the store and when I came out it wouldn't start again. This time, the dash lights were making a clicking noise like it just barely didn't have enough power to turn over but I could still put the top up, roll the windows up and use the alarm to lock/unlock it. After checking around a little bit, I noticed some corrosion on the negative cable on the inside of the part that sits on the terminal of the battery but couldn't really get any of it off with what I had with me in the car.

My questions are these:

1.) Am I wrong in thinking it's not the alternator since it will start back up after it dies usually? I figured if it was the alternator, it shouldn't ever start back up after it died.

2.) Could the corrosion on the cable be making it not be able to start even though there's a good enough connection to get power for the dash lights to come on, etc.?

3.) Could I just have some sort of draw in the system somewhere? If so, how do I troubleshoot that and find what is causing the problem?



TIA

Ben

GoFaassttt

Your battery is dead or dying.

bseries_ben

Just had it on the trickle charger at advance until fully charged and was good to go 3 days ago, now it's happening again...

Siepel

^This will not shut your car off whilst driving.

Ground wire or ignition problem (fuse or LOTS of keys on the ring?) Could be some aftermarket alarm system as well.


Siepel

GoFaassttt

^ Disagree. My s2k did shut off once while I was driving. After restart I could not accelerate above 3k or 4k w/o it shutting down. Turned out to be a dead battery cell.

bseries_ben

When you say lots of keys on the ring, do you mean I could've damaged the ignition by having a lof of weight from extra keys on my key ring? Could be a possibility, I do have a number of keys on there and ignition switch was suggested on my local board. Testing voltage with car running and with car off tomorrow, we'll see how that comes out.

usermiaewa

Its not the weight of the keys.

Lots of keys (or metal) may interfere with the chip in the key that is used by the immobilizer feature.

Mike

2poor2mod

Possibly a loose connection of one of the terminals on the battery, check those by wiggling the terminals back and forth.

bseries_ben

Checked, removed, replaced both cables to the battery, still no go. Dash comes on but car won't turn over.

bseries_ben

If that was damaged, would it cause the car to shut off while driving or would that only explain it not starting back up?