Electrical Issues
 

Hi All,

I am having some weird issues with my 8. When I go to start it, I hear clicking coming from the vicinity of the fuse box, and I get some odd dial sweeps. All the dials tick off the top 1/3 to 1/4 of their respective range for a few seconds. My radio seems to "charge" if I leave the car in the on position. Basically, the LCD will barely light up, then slowly get to the point that the radio comes on for a few seconds, then shuts off. Then does that all over.

I thought it was my battery, but after sitting all weekend it read 12.07V on my multimeter. I had thought I solved it by checking my ground connections around 2 weeks ago, but found something strange in my fusebox. There were some odd connections on the fusebox itself, as well as a ground wire drilled through the plastic and attached to the mounting point of the main fuse box.

In the pictures, the colour of the outline box represents the wire it is connected to. The white box, is a switch/relay/Ihavenoidea that I found underneath the fuses in the main box. The top green box, is a soldered connection (I soldered it, as it was just twisted and taped together previously), that basically just reduces the gauge of the green wire so it can be spliced later. The bottom green box is where the green wire connects to a black wire with a blue stripe into the fuel pump speed? relay. The red box is where the RED wire splices into a white wire with a green stripe that goes to a 15A fuse.

Attachment 214258

Picture 2 is the actual switch/relay/Ihavenoidea that I found, along with the markings/diagram on the side. 4 wires are attached to things, and the 5th is not attached anywhere. The Red and Green wires are attached as described above and pictured below, the blue is attached to the main fuse box as seen in picture 1. The black is attached to the lower mounting point for the fuse box, which I sanded the nut to get a better connection. The Yellow wire is cut, and not attached to anything.

Attachment 214259

Picture 3 is the splice that the GREEN wire from the original splices into the fuel pump speed relay after being reduced to a smaller gauge grey wire. The grey wire is pretty chewed up, so I was thinking that it might be shorting, so I moved the splice up to a point before the break.

Attachment 214260


Picture 4 is a picture of the splice for the RED wire, into a White with green stripe wire that goes to the 15A headlight low L fuse.

Attachment 214261

I'm guessing, based just on writing this out and investigating the connections, that this is a VERY POORLY installed DRL switch, as this car was imported from the US to Canada. But could this cause the issues I've been having? It seems a little strange that it would take EVERYTHING out like that, but I don't know enough about electrical to say otherwise. Let me know if any more info would be helpful. Any suggestions for testing would be very much appreciated.

Yes it could be the cause. Shoddy wiring can cause all sorts of issues.

So what do you think? Remove it entirely and re-test? I mean, I don't have working DRL right now anyways, so it's at the very least, just a useless switch, but at worst causing my starting issues.

Going back to stock would be your best bet.

Alright, well that wasn't it... Same issue. Did some other troubleshooting. Knocked the starter with a dead-blow hammer. No joy. Found something else that looked a little odd, but seemed to do nothing.

A wire splice that went from the 30A ACC fuse spliced to the ST (relay?) in the fuse box, ass well as the ACC Relay. The splice is weird, was wrapped in electrical tape that I doubt was factory, being that it was blue, and not heat shrink.


Pictured below
Attachment 214266

Is there any reason any of these relays would fail? or another thing for me to test and try and diagnose?

So, a little more troubleshooting this morning. Decided to jump it to see if it would turn over. Fired right to life. All the accessories are working, runs fine. Got it warm, drove it for 15 mins. Stopped at the top of a big hill and turned it off. Doesn't start. Bump start it down the road, and we're in business again. So my next step is to get the battery tested, but is there any way this could be the altenator?

**Edit:
As a note, my battery read 12.00V on my multimeter before the drive. Shortly (5min) after the drive, it reads 12.45V.

12V is low. 12.45V is okay but really you would have to load test the battery to see if it is good, resting voltage can be fine but the battery can still fail under load. If your alternator were malfunctioning your battery light on the dash would illuminate.

If the battery was good and the alternator bad...it would start and run until the battery voltage dropped and then wouldn't start. If you tried to bump start it it wouldn't work

If the battery is weak and the alternator is good...it would start with a boost or a bump and run fine until you shut it off...and then it won't start.

Sounds more like the second option to me.

Make sure you go over all of the battery cables and the grounds carefully...poor connections can mimic a dead battery

Do you have another battery you can swap in to test? That is an easy way to check :)

It's the battery connections, they are loose.

Car runs off the alternator with a boost (which bypasses the bad connection) then won't restart, it's the terminals.

It's always the terminals.


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Yeah, I think the battery from the focus might work. I idled it after jumping it for 15 min. The voltage while running on the leads, not the terminals is 14+ volts the battery gets up to 13.5ish. After 15 mins of charging, it was at around 13.85V on the terminals, but I could watch it drain once I shut it off, and in a minute it was around 13.5. It's sitting at 12.00V again, around and it's been a half hour since I shut it down. Seems like the battery can't hold the charge

Well, I got a load test done and the battery is holding 12.45V and 817A out of it's rating of 825A. So the battery is fine. Stealth was right. I took the time to look at the actual terminals, sure enough, the positive is caked on the inside... :( Apparently I just overthought it. So, cleaned out the terminal and it fires right up. All this, after I track down and sand all the grounding points accessible from the top.

Thanks everyone for your help, and I think I might steal your signature there, Stealth. It's ALWAYS the battery terminals.

That will do it, it's always the simple things.

A good coating of dielectric grease on all contact points of the terminal will SLOW DOWN how the sulfated material will affect the connections. Dielectric grease is cheap (selling in small 0.2 oz US tubes).