on friday night i left my fog lights on, causing my battery to die. done this before so i didnt event hink about it. i was sick all day yesterday so i didnt get a chance to jump it then. i go out at about 4 or so and try to jump it. when i open my door i notice that the abs,brake,airbag and check gauges lights where all on. the keys where in my hand so the ignition was off. when i went to jump it i hooked it up and within 30 sec the horn started blarring and smoke started rising from the front. i pushed it out and let it sit for awhile. i went back out about an hour ago and the same set of cluster lights where on, again keys in my hand. so i took the battery out of it just incase, i also took the front bumper off and found no burnt wires so far, my garage sucks ass for lighting so ill look more tomorrow. does anybody know what could of caused this? i did the wiring on the fogs myself but its a decent job and has NEVER done this before, ive left the fogs on multiple times and had to jump it before. thanks in advance.
just incase:its and 04 with 02 front swap and non-factory fogs.
sounds like you reverse charged the battery. I have seen it done more than once, but I may be wrong in this case. try a different battery, or read the battery voltage with a meter, red,red and black,black. if you get a negative voltage, get a light or something and wire it to the battery to fully discharge it, then recharge it correctly after it is completely dead.
01 cav w/01 3400 gam gt 4t45e
Jo Mx... wrote:sounds like you reverse charged the battery. I have seen it done more than once, but I may be wrong in this case. try a different battery, or read the battery voltage with a meter, red,red and black,black. if you get a negative voltage, get a light or something and wire it to the battery to fully discharge it, then recharge it correctly after it is completely dead.
that actually sounds like a good posibility....I have also seen it done. If you did do this, hopefully you did not harm anything else in the process.
well i recharged my yellow top and im going back out to see if it works now, it held the charge so we shall see.
car started but my volt gauge is only showing 10 volts with the car running, im starting to think my al went out and im gonna take it off tomorrow and get it tested. also my radio will not turn on, ill worry about that once i get this taken care of.
Quote:
yellow top
well there's your problem
prob blew a bunch of fuses
Trevor Mullins wrote:prob blew a bunch of fuses
thats what im thinking.
kardain- whats wrong with the yellow tops?ive had this for 3 years now with no problems.
Since you said that you saw smoke from up front you will want to pay attention to the fuse links on the starter big post. The fuse links will be the first 2 inches of the smaller wires that feels a little rubbery. These are essentially wires that burn in 2 if under an excessive load, look for either completely burned up wire or a small piece to be burned up. To fix one of these cut it out from ring terminal to just past the plastic cylinder (which is after the rubbery 2 inches). The plastic cylinder will have a number on it which is the amperage that it is rated for. You will need to have that info in order to get a new one from the parts store. Or if you have an old wiring harness laying around, rob one from that. What makes me think this is that your alternator doesnt work, It is wired through one of the fuse links.
01 cav w/01 3400 gam gt 4t45e
kardain , does your horn work?
.1 amps , actually .12 amps is what I got recently on a shorted horn, the button in the air bag was shorted, causing the horn relay , down by your left foot , to be energized all the time, the horn its self was fried long ago so there was no sign of a short, just a relay coil that was always on draining a new battery over night.
I dont want to steal this thread, I just wanted to tell you my findings.
01 cav w/01 3400 gam gt 4t45e
Yep, works fine... since I ditched the optima I haven't had a problem with the lead-acid battery (except the one time I left my lights on, but that doesn't count)
Why didn't you wire the fog lights through a positive connection that shut off through the ignition so they turned off when you took the key out no matter what?
It doesn't explain your current problem, but it might have saved you some initial trouble.
Kardain - Is your current battery a SLI battery, or a Deep cycle?
Reason I ask is because when using a deep cycle battery in an application where you start the car, you need to oversize it. Reason is that SLI batteries have thinner plates in them because they're made to discharge at a massively high rate for a very short period of time.... like the couple of seconds it takes to run the starter motor. Deep cycles have thicker plates and are made to discharge at a slower rate over a longer period of time.
Also, the discharging..... I'm pretty sure an Optima Yellow top is a 55Ah battery. Most times that's done off the 20 hour rate. That means that at 2.75amps it takes the battery 20 hours to be at 10.5 volts (dead). However if you were to cut that amperage in half, it doesn't necessarily double your life to 40 hours.
By the way.... and Optima is a lead-acid battery too.
Jo Mx... wrote:Since you said that you saw smoke from up front you will want to pay attention to the fuse links on the starter big post. The fuse links will be the first 2 inches of the smaller wires that feels a little rubbery. These are essentially wires that burn in 2 if under an excessive load, look for either completely burned up wire or a small piece to be burned up. To fix one of these cut it out from ring terminal to just past the plastic cylinder (which is after the rubbery 2 inches). The plastic cylinder will have a number on it which is the amperage that it is rated for. You will need to have that info in order to get a new one from the parts store. Or if you have an old wiring harness laying around, rob one from that. What makes me think this is that your alternator doesnt work, It is wired through one of the fuse links.
the first things im checking tomorrow are the fuseable links then off to the other stuff. thanks for the help guys
just went out and finally looked at it, the fuseable link between the starter and alt is burnt in two. im going to remove the alt and have it tested just incase. should be a cheap fix.
For your radio problem, the radio/INTLP 10a fuse is fed from Batt 1 40a fuse under the hood. There is no fuse link on this feed.
There are other items on the batt 1 fuse such as, the cluster, horn, exterior lps, cig and both headlamps.
There is a 12 gauge fuse link on the alternator feed.
01 cav w/01 3400 gam gt 4t45e
the dealer ordered the link but said there is no fuse link. i have a wiring diagram for the alt that im taking with me today down there. the interior fuse for the radio is fine, gonna check under hood and then pull the radio itself.
The dealer is full of crap. Its there , Its just a part of the harness. They probably wont list it individually because of that.
You could of gotten the fuse link from a local parts store. Its normally an in stock , shelf Item. Probably what the dealer is going to do.
The new one wont have the plastic cylinder on it , just a crimp connector.
01 cav w/01 3400 gam gt 4t45e
well all the parts stores around me dont carry it, ive checked. it was last resort to go there, im thinking its built in but just doesnt show it in their pic is all.
car is fixed and running again, it was that fuseable link between the alt and starter. also the radio had a blown fuse, yay.
