Any ideas before I have to sell

[CivicEater]

I have gone through almost 10 repairs since the start of the year. I am tired. Now the car will only start when it has sat. The car got a new alternator and battery and the next day I was driving and one of the power wires leading to the battery rubbed on metal and shorted out. Car shutdown. I fixed that and then it started radomly not starting. I guessed it was the starter becuase when it doesnt start all I hear is a click. I put in a brand new starter and still justc click so I put in aanother and the same thing. I know the starter is good and I know the alternator is fine becuase I have tried 3. The battery is brand new. The shop says the battery isnt charging right. Also ever since the short incident with the battery the tach and oil pressure gauges jumnp around like crazy ...the tach will literally just jump from 0 rpms to 8000 then back back and forth back and forth. The car also devepoed a bad miss after the battery incident. I cant think of anything else to replace. I have checed every ground I see and they are all looking fine. This all started after the battery shorted. I am tired and in debt and cant get another loan. unless I can find a cheap fix I might have to sell her.

 

[VibrantRedGT]

I doubt anyone will buy it with this problem. Seems like you shorted many things out. Start with the basics. Every fuel component and every ignition item should be check first. Could be something as stupid as a fuel relay.

 

[94TURBO5 O]

Dude I feel your pain in this situation. Our cars are nearly 10 years old and thing are gonna happen. I have been through it all and the only remaining stock parts on my car is the heads, cam, bottom, rack and and K member. I have replaced everything and had many repairs in a year as well. My car started out as a project and along the way of modding it everything goes wrong. You add one thing and another thing goes wrong and a majority of the peeps on the forum have prob have had similar incidents. These cars will break you b/c you can not stop modding them.
Hang in there we will find a solutuon for you and get you all squared away.

 

[CivicEater]

But if it was fuel relay would it start intermittanly? The volt guage slowly lowers to the N while driving so I think I shorted something in the charging system but I cant find anything........I know these cars are old and I just wish I had a junker to get around in when my car is down but I dont and I am running out of relaible rides. I love my car to death but I cant have it crap every week

 

[mytight95]

did you check the ground for the computer, etc. what about the ground on the engine block just below the oil pressure sending unit, what about the ground on the pass. motor mount. To me this def. sounds like a wiring problem. Thats just about hte only things that will be intermittent. Have you checked all your positive cables, including the one in the fuse boxes, in the engine baby esp. does one of the wires on the alt have a bad conn. or something. maybe your computer is going ape????


Give it time, the selling thing will pass, i didn't listen for a long time. But the best thing i know to do with these cars is get a daily driver. I bought a 'yota truck. I am sure you could find a repo or something dirt cheap. I under a thousand for my truck. the best thing right now is the gas mileage. Instead of fixing it right this second take the money for one of the shop bills(that hasn't been incurred yet) and buy a beater.


Whatever your decision, i am sure between everyone here and you checking and going down the list the problem(s) can be found


jason

 

[BlackVert]

check the wires. my money is on another melted wire (from the short) or a corroded or bad connection that is not letting enough electricity through. the hypothesis is that when it is hot, the resistance is higher. good luck. let us know.

 

[BlackVert]

are problems like this common on these cars? the research (carpoint.com) says that they are very reliable and the problems are minor and easily fixed.

i just bought a 1995 vert and told my wife that it was going to be reliable. she says i'm crazy to buy a car like this. it would kill me to have to admit that she was right.

i have had very few problems with my 1996. are they more reliable than the 95s are?

 

[CivicEater]

I checked the ground by the oil pressure sending unit, and I checked the positive battery cables to the engine fuse box, and they look fine. The only part that looks somewhat bad is the 1 inch section near the batt terminal where it got burnt through the rubber and touched metal. I will check the pass motor mount tomorow morning. I would love to buy my friends old s-10 but it wont pass inspection and it smokes bad....but its just abut all I can get for 50 bucks.
On the reliablity issue, I had almost no problems for the first 6 months I owned the car then I started modding it seriously and the problems wont stop

 

[94TURBO5 O]

Check the cable running from the fuse box terminal to your alternator.
The wire that melted which power wire is it?

 

[go-stang5.0]

I would doulle check all your grounds. You may want to stop by a dealer and ask then where all the grounds are on the car cuz theres all kinds of weird things that happen when you have bad grounds....like the car is possessed. And this looks like one of those cases. I've heard of things like clutch cables breaking (we found out it was because the battery was grounding through the clutch cable ) other times gauges would jump around like crazy, warning lights would come on when nothing was wrong with the system the light represents, and switches would not work right (like your hot/cold vent dial becomes a dimmer switch for your head lights, yes thats right). All kinds of weird things happen with bad grounds. So I would double check those things. Also, why do you keep buying all these parts. If you can test things to make sure they work or figure out what you can about the problem. Dont buy anything till you know whats wrong. If you keep buying parts till you get it right it wil get really really expensive.

 

[go-stang5.0]

Something odd happend today....

Funny/odd thing happend today. Drove to wisconsin today and that means I whomped on it and shifted hard and stuff and all is well. But when I get back to my area at night my shifter handle breaks at the light as I'm putting it into first as it turns green. Keep in mind I have a pro-5.0 shifter. i really dont know how the hell that happend. That shifter is supposed to be really sturdy and it fealt sturdy to me. Anyway's I've got a tri-ax handle on the way (thank god we can get handles seperately for our cars and not have to buy a whole shifter). But in any case anyone else have this problem? Oh and if you care, it broke right below the shift knob where the threads for the knob stop. At first, I thought I broke the knob cuz I didnt think I could possibly break the shifter but then I looked under the knob and saw that the threads were still in the knob. Maybe pro-5.0 should have made their handles out of the plastic that ford makes their oem knobs out of cuz I thought that woud break before the shifter ever did but I guess not......end pointless rant.

 

[go-stang5.0]

sorry meant to post as new thread...desregard my previous statement in this thread.

 

[mytight95]

hey man where the ground connects to the battery is where the fusible link wire connects to the ground(i think that is what its called) anyway i would seriously check that out or replace it, cause it is important----that is the ground for the whole system pretty much


jason

 

[WMDPALMER]

I had an 88' LX. Alot of problems i had was due to bad grounds. I had a good mechanic do a "break out box". I don't know what it is but he was able to find a few ba grounds which contributed to some of my problems. Good luck man, don't give up!

 

[CivicEater]

Check the cable running from the fuse box terminal to your alternator.
The wire that melted which power wire is it?

The power wire that melted was the one coming right off the positive battery terminal. It is about 2 inches from that point and it rubbed into a piece on the power steering punp line.

I only really replaced things that needed it like the alternator and battery because of another problem I was having with the car. The starter was put on becuase of an autobody buddy I have was helping me look for bad grounds and tapped it and then the car started so we just jumped to that conclusion. I have checked the whole power wire to the alt and also to the fuse box and they both look fine on the outside (I never cut them open).

 

[94TURBO5 O]

Have you chased that wire that melted to see what component it leads to?

 

[maypo59]

And you should REPLACE any wire that is suspect, just looking at it doesn't do any good. It can look fine, and still have a bad spot.

 

[CivicEater]

 

[CivicEater]

Here is a pic of the part that got fryed.....it was on the half that leads to the box......well nevermind it wont let me load it it says its too big. Anyway it leads into the fuse box and then the fuse box runs to the alternator power wire. There doesnt look to be a short anywhere but I guess I cant tell with the wire in rubber. If anyone can load this pic for me I would appreciate it I can email it.

 

[DougNuts]

I would replace the wire that shorted out for sure. How good are your positive & negative connections to the battery? Have you cleaned them lately? Is there any build-up on the wires to - from the battery close to the terminals?

I had a hot start problem with my 88 GT for a while. The guy I sold it to fixed it for $1.50 by buying new terminal clamps!

Electrical stuff gets old and the heat takes it's toll. I hope you didn't fry your computer.