Alright this is my first post on here, but my brother speaks highly of y'all and I am at a loss on my car, and in serious need of help from greater car minds than me.
I bought the car thinking it simply needed a new power wire. Well we replaced that, but didn't fix it. At that point the car was starting, but the battery light was on and the new battery was registering low, floating around 12V rather than the 13.7...
Next we thought possibly the alternator was bad, but we would drive it around the block a few times, and it never lost juice, was still reading around 12. I can't even remember why or what happened now, but ended up having to replace the alternator. Still wasn't the problem...
So my buddy thought maybe the battery needed to just be charged up, so he hooked it up to a charger, and had me start the car, damn starter starts smokin, fried it. So he thinks the starter was drawing a charge. So we threw the new starter in it yesterday, and as we went to hook up the negative on the battery, when it would touch, the car was trying to start. He pulled the starter relay out, and replaced it with the blower fan one, didn't do that anymore then.
At this point, the car started up, the battery light was off (actually it was faintly there' as if it wanted to come on, but we know it needs a new serpentine belt so figured that was why) and everything seemed to be goin good.
Went to start it today now, and it started right away, but sounded way off. So I turned it off and pulled the key, but the starter continued to click. Had to pull the battery for it to stop. Then went to hook up the battery again, and had the same problem with the negative, when it would touch, it would try to start. He once again pulled the relay and put in the new one I just bought, and again that fixed the problem. Got everything hooked up again and tried to start it, and all I'm getting is a click. Believe from the starter, but it's not even trying to crank now.
So it seems as though there is a wire issue somewhere, just completely lost. Seems like we have replaced everything in the charging system. Something is obviously causing those relays to go to @!#$, what could that be? Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated. I just really don't wanna take it in to a shop and get charged a @!#$ ton for them to hunt for the problem if its something right in front of my eyes I can take care of for a fraction of the cost and time.
bad starter?
engine wont turn free by hand?
make sure car body and engine are well grounded to the battery
on these cars if the body loses ground it causes all kinds of crazy issues and problems
including all the dash warning lights to be stuck on, etc
-96 cavalier 2.2 auto 143k miles
