Electrical Blackout Upon Attempted Startup PSA
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Racer
Joined: Oct 2012
Posts: 314
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Electrical Blackout Upon Attempted Startup PSA
I'm in the process of wrapping up my AD244 alternator upgrade, chronicled in this thread: https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...r-upgrade.html
I just dealt with an electrical issue that had me terrified for a bit and thought I'd add a small bit of experiential wisdom to the public record.
TLDR: CHECK YOUR BATTERY CONNECTIONS, SUCKA!
Long version:
After sitting for a month, my battery was dead when I went to fire her back up so I charged it on the trickle and somewhere in that process decided to remove the battery from the car. When I was removing the positive lead, some "stuff" fell into the abyss of wiring and various corvette stuff below. I knew there was at least one washer.
I found one of the washers and got the thing back together and with a full charge on the battery, went to start the car. Before turning the key, everything seemed fine, electrically. Dash lights good, headlights would turn on and rotate. But upon turning the key, everything would instantly go dead. Blackness. Like there wasn't even a battery in the car. Pulling the negative battery lead would reset things and I could try again but the same thing kept happening. Also, when reinstalling the negative lead, I'd get little crackling sparkage. So I knew something was weird somewhere.
I fished around for the other piece of the positive lead I swore I had seen and eventually pulled the battery tray and discovered the other item, which was an improvised lead (Pb) spacer that had been placed between the cable lead and the battery mounting pad. To my amazement, even with both of these put back in place, I found that the positive lead was actually loose and could swivel on the mounting pad. Ah-ha, I thought! That must be the source of these electrical issues. I'll cut out the tale of the copper spacers I worked up to take up the slack and skip right to the part where I realized that the problem was actually that a previous owner had subbed in a mounting bolt that was TOO LONG and wasn't allowing a tight fit before it would bottom out.
I trimmed some length from it, reinstalled so that the positive lead was nice and tight against the battery, and she fired right up.
CHECK YOUR BATTERY CONNECTIONS, SUCKA!
I just dealt with an electrical issue that had me terrified for a bit and thought I'd add a small bit of experiential wisdom to the public record.
TLDR: CHECK YOUR BATTERY CONNECTIONS, SUCKA!
Long version:
After sitting for a month, my battery was dead when I went to fire her back up so I charged it on the trickle and somewhere in that process decided to remove the battery from the car. When I was removing the positive lead, some "stuff" fell into the abyss of wiring and various corvette stuff below. I knew there was at least one washer.
I found one of the washers and got the thing back together and with a full charge on the battery, went to start the car. Before turning the key, everything seemed fine, electrically. Dash lights good, headlights would turn on and rotate. But upon turning the key, everything would instantly go dead. Blackness. Like there wasn't even a battery in the car. Pulling the negative battery lead would reset things and I could try again but the same thing kept happening. Also, when reinstalling the negative lead, I'd get little crackling sparkage. So I knew something was weird somewhere.
I fished around for the other piece of the positive lead I swore I had seen and eventually pulled the battery tray and discovered the other item, which was an improvised lead (Pb) spacer that had been placed between the cable lead and the battery mounting pad. To my amazement, even with both of these put back in place, I found that the positive lead was actually loose and could swivel on the mounting pad. Ah-ha, I thought! That must be the source of these electrical issues. I'll cut out the tale of the copper spacers I worked up to take up the slack and skip right to the part where I realized that the problem was actually that a previous owner had subbed in a mounting bolt that was TOO LONG and wasn't allowing a tight fit before it would bottom out.
I trimmed some length from it, reinstalled so that the positive lead was nice and tight against the battery, and she fired right up.
CHECK YOUR BATTERY CONNECTIONS, SUCKA!
