Ok, I just got finished replacing all my rad. hoses and securing all vacuum connections, put a new battery in it ( interstate megatron 2), and started her up and le her warm up to operating temps. . .all of a sudden the power drains slowly and she dies completly. No charge what so ever. I knew I had a small drain when the power is off, because the next day I go out to start her she's dead. What could cause this? I haven't really took her out, only started her up in the driveway and rev'd it for a while since the past few weeks. any suggestions?

 

well on first thought i would say it ran out of fuel, but if you say you have no charge, that leads me to belive that the alternator is not charging the battery, so the last few times you started and ran the car it was straight off the battery, since its brand new it would hold up for a while, especially with no "driving load" being put on it, much less power required to idle than to drive...
if you can get a jump start it up and test the alternator, if not take off the alt and take it to autozone they can test it off the car for free, but first just check the wires and fuses in the engine bay, make sure nothing is broke or loose, then jump & test

 

if you have an amperage tester you can test for a parasitc draw when engine is off you may also want to check if the alternator is charging the battery and if theres any voltage drop at the cables from the alternator or ground. do you have a dmm?

 

I just had this problem and i turned out to be the alt. Removing it, isnt that hard, it should only take a few minutes, but you dont need to take it out to test it. Just place a multimeter on the cables and test it yourself. When i had this problem i removed the alt and took it to autozone to have it test and they told me it was fine, and i ended up replacing the battery when my old battery was fine. Also when you car is running check you volts gage, if it sits at or below 12 volts then the battery isnt being charged.

 

well thats the thing. . .my altenator is almost brand new, and today I took my battery up to auto zone and they said it was gone. The battery before that was too, about a month ago. But the previous owner had it then and I don't know how long he had it. I checked the altenator just in case,and it is fine. .could something be killing my battery, or should I replace and go from there?

 

your alternater is probably bad or it is shorting out

 

this might be a complete coincidence, but the same EXACT things were happening to me about a month ago.

i also re-grounded the entire car to no avail.

turned out to be my belts (no ps, ac, airpump) weren't in spec. replaced them and electrical/charging problems stopped. i'd be willing to bet at some point you'll be at a stop and everything will work fine, but your idiot lights will come on and stay on as long as you're at idle.

now, this was just my case but the way you've described everything is EXACTLY what was going on with my car. i could be wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time, ha.

-ian

 

marcsrx7 - if you are saying that you have manual steering, no A/C and the airpump is gone from the car, or at least the belts, than that is a really good reason to have bad problems except at idle, see while at idle the belt is barely spinning, keeping the alterantor moving just enough to keep it working, but when you are driving, well the alt doesn't get the RPMs it needs to keep up with everything else that is going on..
see the airpump in your system is the key, it pulls against the alt, kind of like tug-o-war on your belts, one pulling left the other right, keeping just the right amount of tension on your system, so in order to overcome that problem, put an airpump on, or a belt at least, or a dual belt alternator pully, that will keep enough tension on the alt to make it move the way you need it to at any rpm range, without these solutions your belts are just slipping

 

mike,

yeah, my ps ac and air pump are removed. i have the dual pulley on the alt. but the belts were so worn at this point that the car wouldn't hold a charge at idle. i replaced the belts and haven't had a problem since. they way i was understanding it was there wasn't enough tension at idle so the alt. was spinning much slower than normal. when i gave it gas (up to 1100RPM if i remember correctly) the volts would jump to normal. when i was finally stumped, i read a post on here stating that there should be no more than 1/2 inch of play in the belts. mine were almost an inch!! so, i replaced the belts and the problem has completely gone away!

i was just putting in my .02 because his posts are almost exact copies of the posts i made when i was having charging issues.

-ian

 

ah crap for some reason i thought you were the op when i posted that, my bad, little to much booze last night wasn't really paying attention i guess lol

 

I'll check my belts and so forth, but my question (just for future reference if this fixes my problem) is there any thing in the charging system itself that could kill a battery completely, as in bad cell?

 

We went thru this a couple of months ago. The alt was dead or dying and in the process killed the battery too. So just because your battery is dead doesn't mean the alt is good.

 

what about if I got one of those battery brain voltage protectors? would that help me any?