Thankyou guys!!! I've been having problems with my battery not holding a charge. Noticed the positive side connection looked really dirty, so we cleaned that and reconnected it, gave the car a jump, and it ran fine -- but tried to start it again 3 hours later and it was dead. We did this several times this weekend, and the car would never start after 3 hours. We thought maybe it was the cables, but the local autoparts stores don't even carry them, and the negative cable at the dealer is $17 and the positive was $120! There's all kinds of wires and crap attached to the positive cable -- the dealer parts guy told us to take it to the shop and have a mechanic check it out to see if we needed the whole wiring harness that comes with the positive cable, or only part of it. I found this message board just surfing around, and because of THIS THREAD I told my husband about the possibility of the trunk light...he opened the trunk, and closed it almost all the way and it looked like the light was staying on, then he touched the bulb and branded his thumb. We removed the trunk light, jumped the car again, and I went out this morning to start it, and it started right up! Thank you guys so much for the idea -- saved us $120 for the part, plus who knows how much for the mechanic to (probably) misdiagnose it...
Gratefully,
Katiecat
'96 Contour GL
