Ok, so this car was slightly Bubba'd even before I got it. The computer stuff had been replaced, and all that entails.

First off, I have a power drain somewhere. It might be a loose groundstrap, or anything. I can jump the car, drive it all day, and maybe even the next day, but if I leave it for over 24 hours, the battery is dead. At first I thought it was a short in the battery, so I replaced it. That didn't fix it. I'll leave a charge on it overnight most of the time now. Sometimes during the day I will try to start it, and it will crank normally for a few seconds, then start clicking. Everything dies. The stereo loses it's memory and everything. If I jump it, it will come back to life and run just fine. It appears to have a replacement alternator on it, and when it is running, I have plenty of juice; my headlights don't dim when I hit the brakes, or anything like that. Maybe the negative cable to the frame is loose. I'm not sure.

To add to it, tonight I switched out my cruise control transducer, and to do so, I had to push aside the wire bundle and vacuum hoses on the driver side a bit to get it swapped. That went just fine. I did not plug it in, because I am still missing a piece.
Anyway, I start the car, and the battery light on the dash comes on and starts buzzing. So, I turn the car off, pop the hood, and start looking around. Turns out there is a heavy red wire coming out of the wire bundle that is not connected to anything. It has some electrical tape on it, and just a bit of wire showing, so I am guessing it had a connector of some kind on it. While I was looking around, I accidentally touched the back of the alternator, which caused sparks. So, it is a hot wire when the key is off. Nothing appears to be missing from the alternator, and nothing else is jumping out at me. Trying to pull the car into the garage, I get 1 second of crank, and the battery is flat dead. I jump it, it starts right up and I pull it in, where it now sits until I can figure out what the heck happened.

I know I need to check the grounds, but I am not sure where the straps and negative cable connect.

Any idea where that hot wire goes? It must be something I pulled off when I did the CC transducer.

Thanks ahead of time.

 

A loose ground is going to cause an open which you don't have. You have a short and sounds like a healthy one. You need to get a meter with a 10 amp ammeter at least. You can put it in series with the positive battery cable and see how much current is flowing. Then it is trial by erroe. Start pulling fuses and see when your current flow disappears. Then you know which circuit to look at. It is either bare wire touching ground or a wire hooked up wrong. The red bared wire you should post a pic so it ca maybe be identified. If it isn't hooked up and taped OK it is not the trouble.

Gary

 

Thanks. I have a meter and I'll start poking around with it tonight if it's not raining (no working room in the garage).
There are wires everywhere! Most are just just unhooked plugs, but this one has bare wire, about 1/4" at the end that is a little smashed, like it used to be attached to a clip or ring, or something. I'll get a picture of that tonight as well. It's supposed to be raining/stormy here for the next couple of days, so I have some tinkering time.

 

Looks like I lied. The weather so far is pretty good. I should be able to roll the car out and really take a good look at what is going on. I never got the buzzing and battery light until after I put in the cruise transducer. I didn't hook any new wires up or plug anything in, I just made sure the grand wire was attached. Maybe looking at it when I am not so frustrated will let me spot at least that portion of what is going on. Unless my alternator suddenly died, which I don't think is the case.

Now I am going to obsess about it till I get home from work.

 

Ran home on my lunch break and took a quick snapshot. You can see the red wire just kind of hanging there (I tuck it into the tubing for now). It's long enough to reach the alternator, but I don't see anything missing there. I don't know how much, if at all, this is contributing to the short I am having, or if was something I somehow pulled off swapping the transducers. I am most likely going to do more searching tonight after work, but I figure someone might look at it and say "Oh, that's the wire that goes to..." and know exactly what it's for.

Note the professional wiring job on the wire/plug that goes into the alternator. I will most likely be putting some proper splices in.

The only thing I can think of that changed from when I bought the car to around when I started having problems, is I put a secondary lighter with USB ports under the dash. I hooked it up to power that is only on with the key on, so I can't imaging that's the culprit.

Anyway, here is the pic
.

 

Guys, I may have solved this issue at least. I didn't take a close enough look at the wiring last night because I was just too exhausted in the heat to pay attention.
I think this red wire is the battery connection that goes to the alternator. If you look closely at this pic (I enlarged) it does not appear that a wire goes to that ring connector on the rear of the alternator. I am betting that's the case, and I just need to prep and reattach that wire.
Sorry to have wasted anyone's time!

If things were this loose at that point, I bet my battery has not been charging, either. That's wishful thinking, though, that fixing this will fix the other. I bet I still have a short somewhere else, so not all is wasted.

Thanks for looking!

 

Yes I noticed that in your pic. Looking at something from afar provides solution. That should keep your battery charged!