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Drying it out/Electrically dead

How goes it all? '99 T/A

Well it rained like hell. I had enough clearance to get across the water until someone slammed it and threw this "breaker" under the hood. That was enough to stall it out. Tried a couple times to see if it was going to crank but no such luck. Then ALL power died. I ended up pushing it with the help of 3 passing guys who wanted to get wet too.

Towed it, disconnected the battery cable and let it spend the night drying out in the garage. About 1am I put the cable to the terminal and the half up/half down radio antenna went down. I took it as a good sign. Today however, I've got squat. Meter on the battery shows 12.x volts disconnected. Connecting the cable drops it to like .45 volts across the terminals. Either the battery is nuked and can't call up any amperage or, more likely, there's still a short somewhere in here.

I'm fixing to get out the wiring diagrams and start tracing but figured someone out there had seen and done this before.

I know ya'll have a better idea of where to start than I do fumbling around under the hood.

So where would you get into first?

thanks, Kurt

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Reply to
Overlord
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disconnected. Connecting the cable drops it to

call up any amperage or, more likely,

I would suggest that it's a dead battery. If the battery had juice, and there was a bad enough short to drag it down to a half-volt, you'd be seeing showers of sparks when you connected the cable, and wires would get very hot.

~Steve

Reply to
Steve Allen

disconnected. Connecting the cable drops it to

call up any amperage or, more likely,

You might try charging or jumping it. Where's the air intake on that? If it's down low you might be sad soon (hydro-lock).

Reply to
JimV

I put the cables on the terminals and was getting 12 volts at the other end but even whacking the clamps together wasn't giving me any sparks. Had it + car cable disconnected for a while, screwed in a bolt to the + terminal on the battery and tried again. Got sparks - after I damn near cooked the wires on my little meter checking amperage. The extension cord I was using on the battery charger was defective too. Just turned on the key and tapped the cable to the bolt/charger clamp and got the key ding. I'll continue charging the battery and check for cranking this evening. It could have been a defective battery, or it could have been a dead battery that, once the various minor normal current sucking stuff in the car were disconnected, allowed it to build up a residual charge like lead acid batteries tend to do. Don't know if it would be enough for what I saw tho.

Kurt

disconnected. Connecting the cable drops it to

call up any amperage or, more likely,

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Reply to
Overlord

disconnected. Connecting the cable drops it to

call up any amperage or, more likely,

Hmmm, that doesn't sound good. Researched it a bit to see. It's cold air induction down near the ground. The air filter was wet with a little water laying in the bulb of the air bellows. Having had it hauled up on a flatbed and towed, no doubt there's more in the engine to some degree at least. Having the possibility of electrical power now, I think I'll leave it sit charging and pull the plugs in the morning and see what I can see before cranking it. ~~~~~~ Bait for spammers: root@localhost postmaster@localhost admin@localhost abuse@localhost postmaster@[127.0.0.1] snipped-for-privacy@ftc.gov ~~~~~~ Remove "spamless" to email me.

Reply to
Overlord

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