Just like the topic says, there is definitely a SERIOUS problem with my electrical system in my 2002 Cavalier. First of all, this all started happening when I got done doing the install for my cold air intake, which I'm sure you all know involves taking out the battery and whatnot to run the piping. Well, after I got done the cold air intake install, I put everything back the way it was. Since after the install though, my electrical system has been acting really goofy and weird. Ever since installing my cold air intake, the electrical power in my car has not been acting the same. It seems to be crashing all the time because when I have my hid headlights and foglights on, either side of the hid bulbs go out or they both go out due to low voltage. My radar detector keeps saying low voltage when I hit the brakes and the brake lights come on or when I use power from anything else, and all of my dash lights come on, including the airbag light, service light, abs light, check gages light, check engine light, brake light, turn signal lights, etc. ALL of my gauges stopped working too including the gas gauge, temperature gauge, speedometer, and rpm gauge when my car decides it wants to have these random outbursts of low power/voltage. I'VE EVEN HAD MY TRIP ODOMETER RESET BY ITSELF TOO! I know, crazy right? Almost all, if not all, of the lights on my dash turn on when my car starts to have these random outbursts of low voltage/power. I took my car to AutoZone and had them test my battery and alternator and they said that both of them are just fine. I have hid headlights, 70w H3 Nokya yellow foglights for each aftermarket fog lamp, subwoofers, sub amp, headunit, and radar detector all running in my car at the same time when this all happens. When I start to turn a few things off, the power goes back up and then my hids or whatever else decides to will start working again, etc. This can't be a faulty HID kit because I have been driving around like this for years with HID headlights, the foglights, subs and amp, headunit, and radar detector. So I know all of the products in my car are fine, it must have something to do with a wire shorting out or arching against a piece of metal on or in my car that I don't know about. This is the weirdest part though. At night time, my car seems to act worse about this. That may be a coincidence though. Not sure. In the day time, the hids and foglights and everything power on just fine with little to no problems, compared to night time. Like I said though, this could just be a coincidence of the time periods though. I'm going to be looking around my car today to see if I see any exposed wires that have been stripped to may be hitting against metal causing the problem. But in the meantime, does anyone have any ideas of what this could be? Thanks in advance.
Check for loose grounds for starters.
could your positive battery terminal be bouncing off the intake which is acting like a ground?
That would be a short, not a ground.
or maybe its bouncing off that relay/fuse block on the driver side fender. The Power supply is kind of exposed. Picture of your engine bay would be good, after the install.
Okay thanks guys. I will snap a few pics tomorrow in the daylight for you to look at. Stay tuned!
Grounding problem. Same thing happened to mine before adding another ground. Mainly the ground from battery to body.
Ah, especially if he moved the battery and disconnected the ground that was at the base of the battery terminal to run the pipe. Never hooking it back up to anything...
And it seems when I hit any sort of potholes pretty hard in the ground on the road when I'm driving, that's when my electrical system starts acting up. I'm not exactly sure why but I have a few ideas that may be possible such as maybe a wire is lose somewhere on my car and hitting against a piece of metal, etc.
sounds like you have a loose ground. Every time you hit a bump seems like the wire gets loose somehow. I would check grounds first, since those are the easiest and then move onto the positive side of the circuit, such as fuse panel inside car and the fuse panel on the fender.
could your intake be smacking your plug wires causing an arc thru your intake which grounds out?
I don't think that it is too possible that my red amplifier positive wire could be jumping up and smacking against the intake, that is a relatively long wire and it would half to be a hell of a lot shorter with a lot more tension on it for it to jump that high. There is easily 6-8" of red positive amplifier wire that is loose under the intake piping.
Fix the positive on the battery, make sure you have a connector crimped on the amp wire. Pop the bolt out of the cable, pull the red rubber off, and put it back together as bolt, amp wire, car cable, battery. Chances are the car's cable is not making good enough contact especially with it being crooked like that. And bad contact = huge voltage drop.
Hellraiser and Lil Lightning
Okay guys so I have now decided the start ripping stuff apart in my car to see what aftermarket parts wiring may be causing this. Earlier today, I took out my subwoofers and sub amp, all the amp kit wiring, disconnected all of the sub/amp wiring from the battery and headunit, and tried starting my car, still the same thing happening. Low voltage. Then I tried taking off my direct hard wire cord for my radar detector that is hooked up to the ignition module fuse in the fuse panel. Still nothing changed. My next step is to check my aftermarket foglight wiring. I will let you guys know how that goes too. Hopefully I figure this out soon. I am so tired of my car acting like this. It is really annoying me lol.
Check the voltage of the battery itself.
I have checked the voltage of the actual battery and it is just fine. I have now narrowed down my findings. I know now that my subwoofers/amp/audio wiring or direct hard wire radar detector cord are not the cause of the problem since I have removed them, it still has this low voltage problem. But ever since I took those things out, either when I press on my brakes and the brake lights come on, or when I turn my foglights on, (since the fogs are hooked up to the parking lights and turned on when I put the stock headlight switch to the running/parking light position), this is when my car starts to draw tons of more power causing the low voltage . The only thing I can think of would be check my tail light bulb harnesses and wiring for corrosion(s) or the same for my aftermarket foglight wiring and housings. I wouldn't imagine that it would be my tail light bulb harnesses because I recently (within the last year) went to GM directly and bought their "never corroding brake/tail light harnesses".
Did you check the ground to the engine? If its anything like the LD9 it will be on the rad side and be about where the tranny meets the engine. Maybe something broke? Still sounds like a grounding issue.
I meant the intake, that giant piece of chrome metal bounces off the spark plug wires which fires electricity. Even tho they are covered in rubber doesn't mean you can't feel electricity pulsing thru them. I wouldn't recommend doing this to see tho, it hurts and can potentially be fatal or cause serious injury.
You did have your alternator tested, correct? Did you try changing back to the stock intake being that you did say it happened after you installed the aftermarket one?
RaGiN Z (the fake 05) wrote:I wouldn't recommend doing this to see tho, it hurts and can potentially be fatal or cause serious injury.
Be careful with spark plug wires... it does not feel good at all to get hit with it. I unfortunately learned the hard way, my arm didn't stop twitching for a couple days...
I just thought of something else... Pop off the power wire on the alternator and the positive wire off the battery. Take a DMM and see if juice is able to flow through it...if not, could be the fusible link right off the starter post.
Hellraiser and Lil Lightning
No, I have not tried putting the stock intake back on, before I put this cold air intake on, I had a short ram intake going right to the 2200 box that connects to the throttle body. I had my battery and alternator tested at AutoZone and they tested perfectly fine.
I just spent literally 3 hours working on my car. I inspected the whole front end for any wiring. I checked my headlight wiring, hid kit wiring, corner turn signal wiring, aftermarket foglight wiring, and still NOTHING has changed. I even disconnected the positive and ground wiring from the foglights and it STILL does the low voltage issue. So now I only have my hid kit running from my headlight switch instead of both the hids and fogs.
I must say though, since I disconnected the fogs there has been less current draw from my electrical system in car, but that is probably because those foglight are 70w halogen bulbs and draw lots of power. I have my foglight wiring wired up to my front corner turn signal light wiring on the drivers side. I just spliced the wires and taped it and connected it that way.
All in all though, it STILL seems like there is something wrong here. When I don't hit my brakes, my hids stay on now (since I disconnected the fogs and there is less current draw). But as soon as I hit the brakes and brake lights come on, my radar detector says low voltage and the hids shut off or one of them on either side on the front of the car go out.
I also inspected the brake light wiring as well, checked for corroded tail light bulb sockets, wiring, etc, etc, and found nothing!
I am completely confused as to what I should do about this. I can't drive my car at night time because of this going on since I don't want to get pulled over for my headlights not working and get a fix-it-ticket or something. So I can only drive in the day time of course.
My next step is to check the brake light fuses and see if they are blown, and then I am going to check the engine ground to make sure that is okay or not too. I will also check the fuse panel next to the drivers side strut tower under the hood too.
I am really confused about this though. None of it makes much sense to me. :\
mike hill wrote:
Is it just me or does the negative ground cable that connects to the battery tray look like its disconnected? It looks like its just sitting there without the bolt. But its kinda hard to tell in the picture.
If its not that ground then try checking the wire that goes to the fuse box sitting next to the battery. Maybe its corroded or touching something that it shouldn't be. I had a problem with that spot once before with a simple bad connection. Did the same sort of thing. I would hit a bump going down the road and the car shut off completely. Since you probably didn't touch anything else besides the stuff in that area, that is where I would look.
Try getting new terminals for the battery. Even if the ground is tight if its not clean it can lose contact. The stock terminals are not made to sandwich a 4 gauge terminal underneath. The battery tray wire looks connected its a weird L shaped lug that taps in half way through the wire that leads to the engine. But yah like i said try cleaning where the neg connects to the battery tray.
Okay guys, I will check the grounds to the motor and the battery tray. I will also check the fuse panel above the battery because I do actually remember moving that around ALOT when trying to run the piping for the intake when I installed it. Maybe I was a little too rough with it or something, not sure. However, I will take a look though. I'll get to it as soon as this damn rain stops around here.
