0

The car starts fine in the morning. Since the battery has signs of leakage, I remove it in the afternoon, and put a new one, with a factory sticker indicating it was made two months ago.

There is no indication any power is coming in, not the lightest flicker of lights. I reinstall the old battery and see the same outcome. The circuit seems open.

The old battery gives a reading of 12.4V and the new one 12.5V. These are not loaded voltages, but I assume that for at least the old battery (which was used a few hours prior) there would be enough power for the lights, if not for the starter engine.

My first suspicion is that one of the cables is loose or broken. I had used a battery brush on both sides of the contacts, and so an electric interruption there is unlikely.

I can measure by an Ohm-meter to confirm that the ground (black) cable is fine to any point on the chassis.

What is a point of contact to determine whether the live (red) cable is fine?

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    Make, Model of vehicle? Do you have a simple wiring diagram for your vehicle (perhaps out of the back of your Haynes/chilton manual? er... why not?) For a modern car, I'd place the positive test on the positive bus bar in the engine mounted high amperage fusebox. Of course, the quick answer is... at the other end of the red cable, where ever it goes.
    – zipzit
    Apr 9, 2021 at 15:55

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

The problem turns out to be that a secondary thin cable, which runs along the positive thick cable, has a tiny connector whose ends had disconnected.

The reason for the existence of this secondary cable shall remain a mystery, but it's certainly not going directly to the starter motor. It's much too thin for that. It appears to be a design feature, to make it possible to disconnect the battery without actually having the wrench on hand to disconnect it.

Improve this answer
2
  • Does this secondary cable go to your fusebox? My truck is like that. One battery cable running to the starter, and a second going to the fusebox providing power for everything. I left this off and had nothing whatsoever.
    – Mr. Anderson
    Oct 26, 2021 at 20:34
  • @MattAnderson Good question. The battery cable quickly goes down into the guts of the vehicle, and so it's more than a little tricky to extract it to check. The appearance of a cable with the same color and the same gauge at the fuse box would be a hint, but would be far from establishing it. Another Ohm reading perhaps...
    – Sam7919
    Oct 26, 2021 at 23:17

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .