I drove my 71 vette tonight on a 50 mile round trip. and i got about 2 miles from home. and the car blacked out on me. no power to anything. no headlights the engine died the starter would not spin. no power anywhere. it sat for two minits and all power came back on and it drove about 1/4 of a mile and died again. no power any where. power came back on and 2 minits later it did the same thing. i went through it starting and stopping until i got on a side street near my house. and shut the headlights off and it made it home. i am thinking its a ground problem ? but what ever it is its shutting all power down on the car. just like it did not have a battery in it. any imput on this would be apreciated.

 

I would first check the battery cables and their connections to be sure they are clean and tight. Also, have the battery load tested.

 

yes i ordered 2 new cables from zips. im going to install them and go from there.

 

my 69 was doing the same thing, ended up being a loose and bad battery ground cable to the frame.

 

My cables are good and tight. but they are 50 years old. hoping the new cables will cure my problem. thanks

 

Frequently problems at either end of the battery cables is the area where most "battery related" problems start. I would be absolutely sure that the battery connections are tight, solid and clean. On my 1968 C3 the positive battery cable is the longer of the two. The ground cable is only 24" or so as it goes down and to the frame.

New cables might not solve anything unless one of the original cables has been damaged and has a bulge or tears in the cable's insulation. I have seen wires that had insulation damage develop corrosion inside the insulation and become a bulge due to the corrosion inside. It kind of looks like a snake after it ate a big meal. The area of the bulge can then sometimes change the resistance of the wire as it heats up with current flowing through it and this causes the voltage to drop. After cooling a bit the wire can sometimes conduct electricity again but usually not for very long as the bad area heats up once again and the resistance goes up dropping the voltage.

I had this happen to the power wire for my Electric fuel pump inside the fuel tank. The car would start and run for at most a couple minutes and then die. The car could not start for a while until it cooled down and later and it would do the same thing. It was a tough thing to troubleshoot. It took several days to finally figure it out and I was able to do so using a temporary wire supplying power to the fuel pump. When I pulled the original wire out I found a spot where a rock or something had pieced the insulation and a bulge from the resulting corrosion. Measure the resistance of the (Red) Positive cable and see if it changes dramatically while driving the car. If the resistance starts climbing then that could be the cause of the random stopping of the electrical system.

Getting your battery tested is a good idea and I suggest you get it tested just to be able to eliminate it from the list of potential problems. Sometimes an older battery that has or had excessive lead shedding off the plates and building up on the bottom of the cell can short out. This would cause the voltage to drop that could lead to shut down the electrical system due to a lower voltage than the system needs.

A good internal short might also happen if a plate broke free inside the battery and was shorting inside out the battery. From your description I would lean toward the first scenario as the lead can move around and cause the battery to short out internally and still be intermittent. The broken plate scenario usually leads to a dead battery or a potential fire or battery explosion from pressure building up around the short. The lead on the bottom of the battery sliding back and forth inside the battery case is a much more likely thing to see causing intermittent issues like you describe. A battery shorting out internally gets warmer than it would normally. The worse the short the hotter they can get. If you hold the battery and then move it around you might be able to reproduce the intermittent short. Attach a multi meter to the battery and then I would put the ends up to maybe 45* and side to side movement as well. Some manufacturers don't leave enough space in the bottom of the cell for the plate material to drop/shed off and be completely out of the way preventing internal shorts.

Put a multi-meter on the battery voltage and monitor it while you drive the car nearby home. If the voltage drops very quickly when you apply the brakes or go around a turn the buildup of conductive material on the bottom of the battery could be the cause.

This issue with corrosion getting inside the wires can happen when a person "pierces" the insulation to check for voltage. I have see this same thing happen to wires near the fusible links where someone was verifying the voltage getting through the link. I try not to but when I pierce a wire's insulation I then cover it with electrical tape or liquid electrical tape to seal the hole up after I was done.

 

Sounds like a bad ground to me

 

Sounds like Biden and the Demorats got your number! You better go EV but then who do you ca lllGhost Busters?

 

I was trying to think of the one wire on my car. that would make everything black out. and thats gotta be the wire that comes off the starter solenoid. it feeds the whole car. could it be that its shorting out in the starter solenoid ?? i geuss there is some type of circuit in the solenoid that makes current flow from the big battery wire on starter to the smaller feed wire coming off the solenoid. ??