| Need some electrical smarts. |
Subject: Need some electrical smarts. by hcbph on 2016/4/5 1:19:47 I know enough about a DVOM to be dangerous, so I'm looking for some help to determine if I'm on the right path or not. Here's the background. I replaced the battery in my 86 because the one I had in it was a leftover from the kids car, under size and looks to be almost 5 years old and run down pretty much dead. Put it in last saturday, I'd put a charger on it at 2 amps and green light came on indicating it was fully charged. Car started and ran. Went out sunday and everything was dead. I thought maybe I had the charger on the wrong scale and it wasn't actually charged, so I charged it all sunday unhooked from the car. The charger has an automatic cutoff and disconnected when it showed fully charged. Car started and ran fine. IIRC the dash voltmeter showed 13.2v while driving it around saturday. Here's where the help is needed. I've cleaned up the ground on the drivers side kickpanel, moved a power lead for the speedometer converter from a battery lug to that junction block behind the battery. While I was doing that, I checked all the wiring I could get to for any bare spots etc, didn't find any but covered a couple anyway. I also put some heat sleeves on the plug wires. Tonight I was putting a temporary battery cutoff on the battery negative cable where it hooks up to the battery (positive cable was hooked up) and touched the wrench to metal strip on the panel you remove to take out the battery while putting the adapter on the negative lug on the battery and got arcing. The negative cable had yet to be connected to the cutoff, it was not touching anything at that time. With the battery cable disconnected, I noticed I had voltage on the engine. With the voltmeter shown, turn the switch counter clockwise to 20, show 13 (volts I assume) with doors closed etc, nothing on going from the alternator bracket to the negative battery terminal with the cable disconnected. I pulled every fuse in the main fuse panel one at a time, always got 13v check each one at a time. Switching to the amp setting, every one from 200u to 200m showed nothing. If i moved the meter cable to the 10A DC plug and switched to the white 10A setting, I got a 19.x. Touched the negative on the battery and definitely got an arc when I touched the alternator bracket. Is that saying I've got 19 amps going through the car with everything off? I can't get under the car right now but to me logically it seems most likely something directly off the postive battery cable before it goes to anything including the fuses. Does that make sense, or is there something I'm missing? I did a topside once over on the engine and checked every wire I could get my hands on, I found none burnt, cracked or touching anything they shouldn't. About the only one I have not gotten to is the positive battery cable, mainly because it looks ok to the point it's at the back of the engine and haven't yet gotten it where I can raise it enough to get under there. Apprecate any info or ideas of where to look. Thanks Paul One more thing, I'd been using that battery cutoff for some time, but was planning on upgrading to a better unit. This could have been going on for some time but because I was breaking the connection to the negative cable when not in use it wasn't apparent till now. It's this one: http://www.summitracing.com/parts/mor-74104/overview/ |
