This sucks! - CEG Archives

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Alright, i'm going to try to describe my problems, as best as i can; i can't really think too straight right now, so if it doesn't make sense, i apologize.

So I guess i'll start with today morning....when i got to school i locked the doors and i notice that they sound weird almost a little sluggish, but i was late for class so i said [censored] it and didn't think much of it....fast forward to 8pm tonight, i'm leaving campus and on my way to driving homw, and about 1 mile from school (still 25 miles from home) the battery light turns on...now i was still in downtown detroit at this point, and i really didn't feel like pulling over so i kept driving. Fast forward about 21 miles and i'm just a few miles from home...i notice the dash lights seem to be dim...i turn the radio off, turn off all other accesories and just keep the car going at 70ish mph... then i notice a few seconds later that my tach is sitting zero, i think oh crap, she's not gonna make it home....few seconds later, the clock on my headunit begins to flash on and off...few seconds later, some of the dash warn9ing lamps flash on....then i think it's time to pull over....try to set the hazards, and they wont work....now im on the shoulder coasting down to like 15mph...all of a sudden the car starts bucking hard....now up until this point, i was pissed, but in the back of my mind, i'm thinking, i've read about stuff like this before, sounds like the battery is dying for whatever reason.

...Now the problem is that the battery is new...like less than a year old. I suppose that it could be the alternator going....but there's more interesting info that needs to be considered....

Now we can go back to thanksgiving break, there was a 4 day period when i was sick and my car hadn't moved...at the end of that period, i went to drive my car, and had noticed that my fog lamps don't work...the lamps didn't work, and the dash indicator wouldn't light up....later on that night i decided to just look at the junction box under the hood and check the fog lamp fuse...i check it , and its fine, then i shine my flashlite over on top of my manifold....there's some giant brown balls sitting on top of it, like 3.5" in diameter...i look closer, and it looks like some type of seed or walnut or something...and i look closer and there's crumbs all over my manifold....i guess some [censored] piece of [censored] squirrel or something (probably a squirrel since thre's like 2 that live somewhere around my house) stored food in my engine bay....2 nut things shoved between the runners of the intake manifold, one jammed between the coil pack and the valve cover, another one behind the power steering fluid reservoir...so ya, i was pissed....

also another thing...now whenever i turn my headlamps off, the abs light flashes for half a second...and i dont even have abs on my car.

so i'm thinking that when that [censored] shady ass squirrel decided to get comfortable in my engine bay, he dedided to munch on some wires as well.

My car is sitting dead in the garage right now with a battery that has 11.55ish volts, and god knows what other problem...

I guess it could be the alternator... i really dont know that it isnt... but i'm leaning towards that squirrel having cut through some wires and shorted something out since i'm having those problems with the fog lamps and the abs indicator issue.

The thing that sucks the most is that all of this is happening while im in the midst of like 4 design projects for my engineering classes and a week away from finals...so i don't even have time to mess with the car to see wtf is wrong with it.

Well anyway, if you made it this far....THANKS FOR READING!!!...and basically i'm looking for some insight, does it sound like some sort of short was introduced by the furry rat...and that's causing a drain of the battery?

TIA

EDIt: and also, just to get this out of the way, the battery terminals are clean, they had dielectric grease put on them not too long ago, and the clamps are tight...also...the only changes made to the car were new brakes and rotors like 3 weeks ago...other than that, nothing has been changed on the car in many months...it was in great running condition.

another note, i have projectors installed on the car and made a 12 gauge harness with relays sending power from the battery....this harness was on the car for several months with no problems...and i feel confident with my wiring...but just to be safe, i checked it today, and all the wiring looked insulated and safe

Originally posted by amarv12:
... does it sound like some sort of short was introduced by the furry rat...and that's causing a drain of the battery? ..

Could be but more probable that the alternator is shot. 7 years is a long time for an alternator. Charge up the battery, then test the alternator. Should be 14 to 14.5 volts, engine running, voltage across the battery terminals. Good luck.

Similar thing happened to my sisters Jeep Grand Cherokee. The problem with that was just the battery. I would run the tests like stated above. Good luck

Thanks guys! I guess that's the next step, i should test the alternator before i freak out too much...

My 95 Tour still has the original Alternator! When the battery when bad, the car went haywire! With all the electronics on board today, it's normal.
Battery or Alt for sure. Clean out the squirel nesting as well.

Keep a little cup of antifreeze somewhere under your car. Animals love the taste of the stuff and you'll only have to clean up dead squirrel once, not nuts every time the little bastard decides to make a home in your engine bay.

If you have outside pets it would be a good idea to stash them inside while doing this.

Originally posted by Kyler:
Keep a little cup of antifreeze somewhere under your car. Animals love the taste of the stuff and you'll only have to clean up dead squirrel once, not nuts every time the little bastard decides to make a home in your engine bay.

If you have outside pets it would be a good idea to stash them inside while doing this.

CALLING PETA!!

j/k

PETA is of course People Eating Tasty Animals.

Yeah, animals that abuse my property become endangered species.

When they start helping me pay for stuff is when they get rights to it.

And always remember the three S's of endangered species when one needs to be dealt with:

Shoot it

Shovel it

Shut up about it

Most parts places will test your battery for free. If that doesn't do the trick move to the alt. If that's not it those crttiers ate some wiring and it has gotten worse.

Thanks guys!

Last night i just disconnected the battery and left the car in the garage so that if there is a short, the battery won't be completely killed, and i wouldn't have to risk anything else.

I guess when i get some time now i'll check on the battery and alternator and check back in once i find out the condition of those things...

Did some measuring with the voltmeter tonight....seems like the problem is kind of obvious, but i still wonder what the cause of the problem is....

Here's what i found:

Voltage at battery terminals with the car off: 12.82 V

Voltage at battery terminals with the car on: 12.39 V

When you rev the car, the voltage seemed to sit right about at 12.3X....and when the car was started, voltage dipped to 11.6 momentarily...fwiw.

So ya looks like it's safe to say that the alternator is not charging the battery.

So my question is...that fuse on the alternator...when it blows....that stops the alternator from charging the battery, right?

And a short in the right spot will take out that fuse, right.

The reason that i'm wondering this stuff is because even if the alternator is dead, it still doesnt explain the issue with the fog lamps dying, or the thing with the abs light flashing....it doesnt make a ton of sense to me.

quickest way to test the alternator without any equipment....start the car and pull off the negative battery cable. If the car dies it's the alt, or something associated with it. If the car runs then it's indicative of a bad cell in that battery, or something battery related.

Good luck.

Thanks.

Just tried it and the car died instantly when i pulled the negative terminal off.

Originally posted by COUGAR99:
quickest way to test the alternator without any equipment....start the car and pull off the negative battery cable. If the car dies it's the alt, or something associated with it. If the car runs then it's indicative of a bad cell in that battery, or something battery related.

Good luck.

That's not a good idea. With modern electronics all over the car you risk generating a voltage spike that can fry any of them.

Does the car run now, after the pull test?

Ya, still starts up fine, and all accessories seem to work fine.

WEll since the wiring harness on these cars are garbage, My alternator kept popping ( 5 in 6 months . So what i did to fix the problem was:I ran 2 reds 1 black 8 gauge wires from the batt in the back straight to the alt. rebuilt the voltage regulator harness ( again these harnesses are garbage ) and now it charges great. the reason for this is: I have a stereo system installed, and with the battery in the back i have one lead from the batt. to the main fuse 300A then after the fuse i branch off to the system and to the front of the car to the accu sump i have installed which is a junction box, then to the alt or where ever it goes. TOO MUCH RESISTENCE problem solved

It might be your megafuse which is under the coil pack in the plastic assembly. megafuse is in box with red lead

Or: It's alternator time, Motorcraft if possible

Alternator how to

So when the forums went down...we lost some posts but basically what i did was check the megafuse...checked continuity accross those two ends, the multimeter said it was still continuos, then i checked resistance, was practically 0.

Then i decided to just pull the alternator and have it tested, when i had a it tested, it said it failed the "light circuit" test or something like that...basically they said it was dead.

So i got a new alternator...had it tested, it was fine.

Now today, i finished installing it, and fired the car up....the voltage still sits at 12.xx when the car is on???????

I dunno what the fugg to do?

When the alternator was out, i checked for continuity from the pos big wire at the alternator to the pos batt terminal, it was continous, then i put a lead on the ground terminal that connects to the battery (at the time it was not connected to the battery), and it was not continous.

This really does suck!

Anybody have any ideas?

Ground wire on the battery should have continuity to the engine block and alternator case, and body grounds too.

So i wanted to start with the pinpoint tests...so i started with this one:

And it failed the test...voltage was 0...so i guess that's where my problem is...something shorted to ground?

Now my question is...which circuit is 20? Is it one of the ones off of the 3 wire connector...the service cd is tough to work with sometimes...

I just hope i didn't kill this alternator as well when i tested out the car earlier...that would be not good.

Alright...so i found something interesting...

After my car died, i had it tucked away in the garage, and since i had all of these fog lamps issues, i figured i'd pull the fog lamp fuse just in case there was some sort of drain or whatever...so which fuse did i pull?...well look at this...

It says to pull fuse 5 right? And that's a pdf copy of the owners manual that i got from fords site...but my actual paper one that came with the car says the same thing.

So ever since the car died, the fuse from spot 5 has been pulled.

Now fast forward to tonight...i'm searching through posts to see what info i can find, i log onto autozone's repair manual thing to see if i can find info...and i'm looking through the service cd at the same time to see what i can find out...and i notice something...

See where it has fuse 5 at the top there (says F5)... 15 amps at the battery junction box...trace the wire down...see connector 1885a...that's the 3 wire connector on the alternator!

So anyway...i plugged a fuse into spot 5 fired the b!tch up and sure enough...voltage at 14.4X

I'm so happy...the fog lamps still dont work, but i can deal with that later i guess ...as long as the car is driveable, that's good progress.

Thanks to all the guys that gave me a shove in the right direction!

You really found something there! Fuse 5 killed the input to the voltage regulator. It will be easy to fix your foglamps after that revelation! I find that Ford CD hard to use, I am going to look at my "paper" manual fuse 5 circuit now...

Pretty much found the cause of the fog lamp issue. I tore apart the panel that had the light switch and mirror adjuster in it and started to examine all the connectors...

I found that the connector that connects to the light switch had a single female wire connector that looked like a wire had snapped off from the back... then poking around further i saw a stray wire that looked like the end of it had been broken off....did some searching through the schematics on the service cd and found that it is the wire for the fog lamps...

My guess is that since i have the driver side glove box in my mystique, every time it opens and closes it rubs on those wires... and over time it must have just failed from repeated loading like that....further i'm guessing that the whole reason that it is rubbing is because there is a bunch of spliced wires hooked up to that connector with everything joined by crimp connectors...i really dont think the car was ever in an accident, so i'm guessing it's some type of warranty or recall repair...and as a result of the splicing and joining...there's a ton of extra wiring and other crap that takes up space there now...which means when the glove box opens and closes every time it's fighting for space...

I gotta clean up those wires and make sure everythig is secure, and hopefully that will be the end of my fog lamp issues...

Sounds like a good plan, fixing others work. I do that a lot!

I checked the schematic, the fuse 5 does feed the regulator and fogs, different than my 95 diagrams..

Originally posted by FavoriteMystaque:
I checked the schematic, the fuse 5 does feed the regulator and fogs, different than my 95 diagrams..

Ya, it seems very odd to me...i looked at the fog lamp schematic, and unless the schematic is wrong or i read it wrong, it seems like fuse 5 feeds the power to the fog relay, then when the relay closes, power from fuse 5 is routed to the fogs....there were no other fuses in that path....so that means if one of your fogs happens to short out for whatever reason, all of a sudden your alternator won't charge the battey? ...I didn't think they'd do it that way.

I thought it was odd too.