Had a dead battery Sunday. Got a jump from AAA and went for a 30 minute drive. Voltmeter starting at about 12.9; climbing to about 14.1 halfway through my drive. Read 14.0 when I parked it Sunday night. Alternator probably o.k.

This a.m. noticed that the headlights were halfway up which indicated to me that the battery had gone dead again. Is it normal for the headlights to come up (not on) when the battery dies? Battery is an Optima redtop about 2-years old.

My 2001 coupe has been fairly trouble free until now except for the bad headlight gears. Two recent mods (window valet and doorlock cover) has me wondering if the valet has put an additional drain on the battery when at rest. How about the keylock cover triggering some electronic security measure and also draining the battery?

oops sorry. Just realized I was in C6. Please disregard. I'll repost in C5

Any help, opinions welcomed.

 

Most likely there is nothing wrong with your electrical system. It's probably just time for you to replace your battery. C5's have been notorious for bad battery problems. My '98 started giving me problems after only two years. I replaced it with an Optima. When I got my '03 Z06 I put the Optima from the '98 into the new car. Haven't had any problems at all with the Optima......but check this out.

I have a 2000 S-10 and the original battery was giving me some problems awhile back. So I realize that I still have the original AGM battery from the Vette and put that in the truck. Problem solved. Well, this past Sunday my wife is making dinner and I realize I forgot to get the Sunday paper. I tell her I'm running out and should be back in 5-10 minutes. I got to the paper stand and shut off the truck. I'm out of the truck less than 2 minutes. When I get back in and try to start it, the battery is completely dead. Not even a dim dome light. Of course since I was going out for such a short trip I forgot to take my cell phone. After maybe a half hour a good samaritan offers me a ride home. I grab the battery from my street rod and go back and retrieve my truck. Today I got the battery checked out and it has an internal short and 0 amps.

Do yourself a favor and change the battery while it's not an inconvenience.

 

wow... never heard the thing about the lights coming up halfway when the battery was dead. It could be anything in between the battery, alternator, or starter. From m experience it is most likely one of the connections in between one of these components. I would disconnect them all and clean and then reattach then also inspect and maybe clean the grounds in the engine bay too. Check your engine bay and see if there are any codes...

I, last week, had some issues with starting and a dead battery and when having everything checked at Napa, Autozone, and O'Reilly's they all said the battery was good but that my alternator had gone bad and wasn't producing the amps I needed. Replaced the alt, which didn't work b/c it started throwing a "charge system failure" took the alternator into an auto electric shop and they tested it and said it was working great. put it all back togther after cleaning everything and still using the original equipment and I'll be damned... it all works fine and charging just perfect.

frustrating to say the least..... but try it.... Hope this helps...

Thomas Sullivan

 

I have been troubleshooting a dead battery for several weeks now. Because it was my second dead Delco in as many years, I opted to replace it with an Optima. My new battery was also discharging after I installed it with an apparent drain coming from somewhere. Ran all the obvious checks, could not find any significant draw on battery. When car was off, everything appeared to be shutting off correctly. This past weekend, after making sure the battery had a full charge, it ran down to about a 9V reading after sitting only a few hours. It just so happenes that I noticed an audible buzz coming from inside the car. I investigated this and it seemed to be coming from the fusebox in the passenger footwell. I isolated the courtesy light relay and pulled it as this was the source of the "unnatural" noise. I replaced that relay the next day, recharged my battery and I have had no further problems. At this point, I believe that was the culprit. Interesting, my interior lights were shutting off correctly. I suspect that the relay was malfunctioning on a sporadic basis and was causing a short and subsequent drain. Also of note was that the only codes (other than dead battery) that I was able to pull referenced the drl's and rear window defroster. I have not checked to see if these are on that same circuit but all is well. Lesson here is that even though you rule a circuit out as a potential cause, it could be failing intermittently as in the case of mine. For reference, I have a 2004 Z06 with ~9800 mi. A good source of troubleshooting is the Electrical Problems sticky at the top of the tech section that Bill Curlee was kind enough to put together. I learned a lot from that and used it as a starting point for my analysis. Saved me about $300 and the grief of taking the car back to the dealer