Lotus00

I dont know if this is common knowledge or not, but I thought it was neat.

yesterday my radio balance/fade joystick started crackling whenever I touched it. I took it out and took it apart (the joystick out of the metal caseing), and then put some dielectric (sp?) grease on the contacts for the pointometers (I think thats what they are). Not the parts underneath the stick, but on the sides behind the white circles. I hooked it back up and it worked perfectly, no crackles.

I know usually people just disconnect them, but I havent bumped it yet while driving (but my friend does like to play with it, probably why it started crackling) so I figured it would be better to fix it

Lotus00

wait, dont do this just yet... I just tried to start my car and everything died... odd because I moved it after I did this and it worked fine then.

enigma32

I would have just tried some electric contact cleaner :-)

Illswyn

Um...doesn't sound like you did anything that would be a problem. Think you shorted it or something?

Lotus00

I really dont think that this really caused the problem, I have no power at all. no fuel pump, no starter, no lights... nothing. all the fuseable links check out, and all the in-dash fuses are good. I am almost 100% sure its the ground wire from the battery. it went out on my old car and it had the same problems. Its too late to fix it right now, and I hate doing electrical work...

Illswyn

LOL. I was wiggling the connections to the ignitors, hoping maybe they were just loose causing my tach to stop working. Never know right...

Well I get in the car. Won't start. No click. Nothing. The clock is on, but that's all. I turn the key for a few seconds and hold it. Nothing. Clock resets to 0100.

Worried I did something bad, I popped the hood and poked around some more. Wouldn't start. Pulled the Tempo up next to the RX-7 to jump it, assuming I had drained the battery overnight somehow. None of my interior lights work, so that's highly unlikely, but I've only had it a little over a week or so, never know what gremlin might pop up.

I got the wires all hooked up, then hooking up the last wire to the body of the RX-7, I bumped the negative battery cable. It wiggled. So I grabbed it and yanked. Came right off.

d'oh! Dunno how it got loose, but it was. Tightened it up, right as rain again.

Lotus00

Yeah, when that wire went out on my 82 it cracked under the casing (its aluminum, it gets brittle when its old) so every once in a while the car would just be dead, so I would wiggle the ground cable around for a while and eventually I would get power back. This one is in a loom with the positive so I cant really wiggle it at all. Ill just replace it with the one out of my old car.