I took my car out on the road after 8 months of work in my garage. The car ran great all morning (amazing considering its my first project). The only problem I had was the car completely shut off at one point. It was surely a power issue as I had no juice at all. After poking around, I found that the positive battery line was rubbing against the crank pulley. The plastic loom had worn away and the pully was contacting the cable (but had not worn through to expose any wire). I tucked the cable up out of the way and the car fired up immediately and I drove home (only 2 miles, I didn't want to get stranded too far away) without incident. Later, I started the car without a problem. Does this sound like a reasonable cause effect of the positive cable contacting the pulley? Or are there other gremlins at work here? The battery is new and the temp was right at 190.

 

Might not be the "rub" area directly, but a loose wire-to-crimped-end on either side of the positive cable? Maybe excessive vibration caused an intermittant connection?

When you say the temp was at 190, was it when you re-started the car? Or had the car cooled down substantially?

Reminds me of when I helped a third-genner push his green Camaro off to the side of the road. Apparently it had died near my house on a hill, and he and his buddy were struggling with it. He used to rev when he drove by my house in a "wanna race" kinda way, so I got my kicks out of helping him push his car off the road.

After helping them push it, the kid raised his hood and told me he had looked at the motor as soon as it happened, saw the battery was smoking, but didn't see what caused it. I saw it right away- someone had swapped motors on the car and did a ****-poor job of it; they had used some ancient positive battery cable and re-routed it. The thing had worn thru and was arcing on the strut tower. That's when I learned that Mr. Bad *** had no clue about his car!

 

Thanks Tom. I thought about the temp thing but the car didn't really cool down that much. The whole process from stall to restart was no more than 5 minutes. Besides, there was no power, like the car had no battery at all. No signs of life whatsoever.

I will keep an eye on the cable and double check it at the "not-battery" end. As I said, that was the only time it happened before or since. But I'm still scared to drive it too far from home.

Kevin