So last night Im driving home and stop for some gas a few blocks from my house. Car is running fine, lights are bright and theres no sign of a dying battery or other electric problem. After filling up, I jump in and as soon as I turn the key, I hear a click and all my lights go out. I try again but its like I dont have a battery connected. I pop the hood and check my fuses, check the battery terminal wires and everything looks good. My friend came over and jump started me. As soon as I turned on the headlights, the car died. We jump start it again and I drive home with my lights off. Once in my driveway, I turned the headlights on and the car didnt die. I turned them off and tried again and the car died. We figured it was a bad alternator and called it a day.

Today I jump start the car and disconnected the battery to see if the car would die. I had it running for over an hour on just the alternator. The alternator was putting out somewhere between 14 and 15 volts. I checked the battery while it was disconnected and it had a little over 12 volts. Things looked good so I cleaned the wires and terminals with a wire brush and connected them.

I turned on my dome lights and pressed on the brake. Everytime I pressed the brake pedal, the dome light would dim for a second and return to normal along with my other interior lights. Looks like a bad ground but I have a ground kit I made out of Monster Cable in addition to the stock grounds.

I went for a drive and the car runs very well. Coasting down my street, I turned off the car and tried turning it on but it wouldnt do anything, not even a click. I released the clutch to get it started and drove home. I turned the car off in my driveway but it wont start again.

What could this be? A bad battery, voltage regulator, short somewhere?

 

Add a new ground from the block to the chassis. The ground where the starter connects to, below the sprark plugs area.

 

Could be a bad battery. Check to see whether there is water in the battery first, and then see if you can take the battery over to sears, autozone (you get the idea) and have them load test the battery. Start with the easiest things first.

 

2rotor is right........just because the battery shows proper voltage while under no load, it will probably show "bad" as soon as a load is applied (hence the dying as lights are cut on)......I bet a new battery will solve your problems..
Allen

 

If your battery was low on water, chances are that you've already fried it. This does sound like a bad battery though, not ground cables.

I haven't had this in my 7, but I've had it happen in my other cars, and the symptoms were identical.