So I know these are common, and before you say "test battery and alternator", both of these worked before I put my heads and cam in. Car holds charge fine one day, heads and cam go in, battery has no juice. Seems too unlikely that it just picked this time to crap out on me.

I got the car running till where it will barely idle, and now, it seems like I've tried starting it so much that the battery ran out of juice. Well, I jumped it, and puttered it home and by the time I got there the battery was just completely drained, I barely made it in the driveway.

I'll go get the two tested today, but is there anything other than the battery and alternator that could be causing a drain like this? I dont see any parasitic drains, such as lights being left on. Im just stumped.

 

I'm sure it's probably a wiring mishap of some kind. But while the engine is running you should be showing 14 volts and there should be no way to drain the battery while it's running if the alt. is doing it's job (assuming the battery isn't shot, of course).

Did you get all the grounds reattached to the backs of the heads when you put the new ones on? I don't know how that might affect charging or the battery but it's a common oversight when swapping heads on a 3rd gen. Bad grounds are often the root cause of weird electrical problems.

Other than that..... good tight connections everywhere, including the neg. battery cable where it attaches to the engine? No pinched wires between the intake and head or between the head and the block?

 

All the grounds have been re-ran with new wire and accounted for. (Found that out the hard way with other electrical issues lol)

The only wiring that is coming from the alternator is the plug that goes into the back of it, and the wire mounted with a bolt and all of that seems to be in order, I'll check it out again.

I did get it recharged and tested and it came up alright. I have another alternator around so I'll slap that in and see if that makes a difference, although I highly doubt the current one crapped out on me.

Thanks for the input Damon.

 

Now I cant even get the car to start when I jump the battery from my mothers Subaru, wtf is this? I have done this before and it has worked fine.

 

I hate to sound like a "dad" here, but are you sure your battery cables are good and tightened down properly? A loose cable can cause a LOT of problems like what you've described. when you DO get it up and running, give us your alternator output voltage.

 

sounds like a bad battery, period. If a battery that was on its last leg, sits too long you may never save it. just get a new battery.

 

Na, you arent sounding like a dad, weve all been there. But all the connections are fine though.


And I already got the battery tested and it checked out good so I dont think getting a new one would fix it.

 

If you can't get it started with a jump, then you have a bad electrical connection somewhere, period (maybe in the jumper cables themselves or how they are connected.) People are correct when asking what your alternator output voltage is. If that isn't putting out 14 or more volts, then it is your problem. It may not be bad, but it may have a bad connection somewhere. Recently I had a problem with my battery dying and it turned out that my fan fuse was blown, causing my alternator not to kick in. Sounds crazy right, but according to my wiring diagrams the circuit that drives my alternator is run through the fan fuse. You could have a similar problem.

 

It's interesting that you say that, because I had to rig up a new manual switch for my fan, as the old one that was rigged by the previous owner wasnt cutting it...I'll look into that tomorrow.


EDIT: Yup, as luck would have it, that fuse got thrown out somehow...actually come to think of it, I think I may have used it to fill in another broken fuse for the time being while the fan was disabled. I'll re-charge the battery and see what happens, but I am almost 100% positive it is after looking at the wiring diagram. Thanks Joe.

 

if you have an multimeter one thing you might want to check here is the resistance between the negative and positive cable. for this you do not want the batt hooked up at all.

I know it might sound stupid but.... if you have low resistance there then you found your problem at that point you just need to find the solution where a wire shorted to the body someplace.

if that is good then next things to check and for this you will need the batt hooked up.

resistance from the negative post (not the connection but the actuall post on the batt) to the body, then the alternator body, then the starter body, then the motor, and the ECU while you are at it. at no point should your resistance go above 10 ohms though honestly even that is a little high.

then check your resistance from the post on the positive (again directly on the batt) to the output on the alternator, your coils, your distributor, your starter terminal and selenoid terminal, your ecu power supply.


THEN.....

if you have a high amp setting on your multimeter (10+ amps) make your negative is hooked up to the battery but disconnect the positive connection from your battery. now hook up the dmv between your positive cable and your battery. what you are doing here is seeing how many amps your car draws with the ignition turned off. should be less then .10amps


shouldn't take that long but you might want to give that a shot to see what happens. post your results

 

Badda bing, it WAS the fan fuse ::slaps forehead:: go figure. Well hey at least it was a cheap fix. Thanks you guys!

 

I beat my head against the wall on that one for a week. Eventually I figured that it had to be electrical so I checked the continuity of every wire in the wiring diagram. The fan fuse was the last one I looked at, of course. Anyways, glad my experience was helpful.

 

That's funny because I just posted about the fan fuse in another "charging" thread... hehe.