bureau13

About a year ago, I replaced my main battery ground strap. Since then, I had a period of time where I would get in the car and the interior lights would be off, then suddenly come on, after which the stereo would need to go through setup mode again. I tightened down the connections at the battery, and the problem went away...until now.

I've had this happen a couple additional times recently, and I also had a couple of what appeared to be dead battery no-starts (starter clicks rapidly but doesn't engage, interior lights flicker and go dim, etc) but I disconnected the ground cable from the car and reconnected, and then it was fine.

My hatch seal does let some water in...if the car has been in the rain, I can often take off the tool box panel and there is a small amount of water in the area where the ground strap connects to the body. The ground strap itself seems fine. Is it possible water is getting between the strap and body and preventing a good connection? Or is it more likely that my almost-new ground strap has a problem?

G.P.

Sounds like the water leak could be causing the poor connection.
When you disconnect and reconnect the ground strap, do you clean the contact surfaces?
If you only tighten, or disconnect and reconnect, without cleaning, you are probably just making a temporary connection through the already corroded connection.
I would thoroughly clean the connection, fix the water leak, clean the connection again, then see how it goes.

Alan

Either is possible, but other things are possible too.

It's easy to evaluate the ground point visually. Less easy to evaluate the stock ground strap. However next time it occurs if just flexing the ground strap (most likely at the battery end) can restore function then indeed this seems a likely culprit (again). In that case I would again strip the cover to investigate and plan to replace this cover with a transparent heat shrink cover. I have done this on my car for easy monitoring - but I don't care if it looks stock or not. If you do care you can also use black heat shrink instead
WaytekWire has both kinds in 3:1 shrink (though min qtty applies)

However a couple of other points:

1) Did you vent the battery outside the battery box? you should - particularly since it seems to be a recurring issue.

2) Don't discount degradation of the main positive feeder also at the battery end (likely the portion inside the battery box & for the same reasons). This will have exactly the same symptoms as a ground strap failure - and it has now been in there longer than the original ground strap.

If you have changed the alternator or regulator for a higher voltage version - you may be outgassing larger than normal quantities of sulphuric acid fumes from the battery. Do you have any other signs of significant corrosion in the battery box - bottom/sides/lid?

Alan

GregBBRD

I wish I could tell you all the horror stories with the stock ground strap that runs from the chassis to the battery....

Most all of the problems I have seen are at the chassis end. The cable is slipped into a thin brass end connector and crimped. This crimped area is the first place I go, when I suspect a ground problem.

I had a car in the shop, recently, that would literally not light the interior lights. Walk back, open the rear trunk, and the vibration from the opening latch would cure the problem....enough that not only did the interior lights work, but the car would then start and run!!!

Didn't need to touch anything but open the lid with the key!

Talk about stoping me dead in my tracks.....how is that even possible? Goes from carrying zero amps to carrying 300amps without doing anything?

Crazy stuff.