Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Electrical Trouble

I have a '96 Contour, 4 cylinder, 5 speed manual transmission. I have replaced the alternator, battery, and starting motor.

The system shows that the battery is charging when running. The car runs fine, however every 500 - 600 miles I have to charge the battery. I have replaced the cable that runs from the alternator to the battery. It acts like a bad alternator, but it isn't. I can jump start it, and run it will run indefinetly, so the alternator is putting out enough amps to run the car, but for some reason the battery is not getting charged (new battery, that tests good).

I noticed that there is an unusually high amount of corroision in the electrical wires.

There must be some other cable that needs to be replaced?

I have never seen this problem before. Help!

are you saying that after a while you go to start the car and the battery is dead? because that sounds like a slight draw that takes it a while to drain the battery.

check the hood and trunk lights that they go off when they are closed.

If wires have corrosion, clean it off and see what is left of the wire and lug. Perhaps there is a poor connection. You may have to cut back the wire and reconnect or get a new wire.

Have you by chance looked into the recall on the underhood wiring? I noticed in the salvage yard that ever Contour had bad wires going to the battery including mine. I just got the car and found that the recall was never done. Now I will be installing a new one for around $300 unless I can find one cheaper. Ford wants $800 to install this bad boy in my 2.0.
Good luck.

you can get a decent digital voltmeter for about $10. I used mine to find current leaking from bad cable patches off the postive terminal cable. Ford should have replaced the cable for free, according to a recall, but instead said that the wire insulation had been eaten away by battery corrosion (but w/ no wire corrosion...aren't those harness sheaths supposed to be resistant to battery acid???). Then they charged me 50 dollars for diagnosing the patch that I had already fixed. fantastic!