ARRRG Problems

[stefan]

Ok so for the first time my festiva stranded me in the cold today. (really cold)

What happened; I was using my car all morning, no problems. Noon, I park and go somewhere. 4 oclock or so I go to my car.. I go to start it.. nothing... no power. Now I've been having ign switch problems (or I thought, maybe not) So I had a spare with me. I went and replaced it, no change. I get out the tester... humm ok so I only had 3 volts or so.. I go staright to my batt... sure enough, its dead. At this point I walked off to phone for help.. Then I came back.. and sat there trying to find my battery drain... DOH I had left my headlights on... oops. At this point im thinking everything is fine and a boost is gonna save me... Then help arrives... We try boost it... I've got abit of power to the accessories and my cluster lights up dimly. But zero crank. We let it charge with the jumpers for a good 20 minutes... no change. At this point I gave up and got a ride home.
Later this evening I went back with a different battery. I put it in- nothing. We try with the booster cables on too... nothing.. Then i tried playing with the main fuse. I scraped the contacts abit... and tried again.. it started.
But... Under the dash there is a brutal clicking/crackling noise (almost sounds like a relay going crazy)... and a bunch of idiot lights are on on my cluster (some of which I don't think i even have hooked up(digital cluster)). EVEN WEIRDER, The clicking noise goes away when the engine is revved over 2300rpm or so.

So I drive it home trying to keep the revs up because that noise didn't sound good. (also the idiot lights never turned off)
At home I poked around and couldn't figure anything more out, so I shut the car off. I tried to restart it.... NOTHING- No power turning the key, same as before.

Any ideas? It's really cold out and I need my car for work

[GenevaDirt]

It's the fusible link. Needs really cleaned and replaced. IMO
Another on the site just had the same problem....they cleaned up and changed what they thought was a good link and it took care of it.
Easy fix if that is it.

[sasquatch]

my car had a problem where if the batt. cablels are not on tite, when i try to start it, it will just go click and then i will have no power on anything. so i go out and disconect the pos. cable and then connect it again. then it will start. what i did to solve this was get one of those batt. tools with the 3 heads on it that scrape all the old junk off and bring up new lead. then make shure you push them on good and tighten them up. that may help... it helped me... if you have one of those clamp on batt. connectors, check if the wire is still ok in there.

[stefan]

Thanks for the tips guys

It's the fusible link. Needs really cleaned and replaced. IMO
Another on the site just had the same problem....they cleaned up and changed what they thought was a good link and it took care of it.
Easy fix if that is it.

Thats what I was thinking... But do you think that would cause the relay or whatever under my dash to go nuts? Have you heard of that before?
BTW I got the fuse cartages under the hood.

my car had a problem where if the batt. cablels are not on tite, when i try to start it, it will just go click and then i will have no power on anything. so i go out and disconect the pos. cable and then connect it again. then it will start. what i did to solve this was get one of those batt. tools with the 3 heads on it that scrape all the old junk off and bring up new lead. then make shure you push them on good and tighten them up. that may help... it helped me... if you have one of those clamp on batt. connectors, check if the wire is still ok in there.

Would it go click under the dash or under the hood? I know the starter solenoid will click if you don't have the power to turn it over... But this is under the dash... and it keeps going nuts when the car is running... and its RPM sensitive.. lol

Deafinatally not the battery cables. The batt is a monster interstate (about a year old). The Battery clamp ends are about 4 months old... Everything is spotless and lubed with di-electric grease. Battery/starter/motor grounds were gone over, sanded clean, and di-electric greased about 4 months ago.

[Futurefesty90]

Stefan you sound so prepared. "I've been having ignition switch problems so I pulled out my other Festiva".

[GenevaDirt]

Thanks for the tips guys
Thats what I was thinking... But do you think that would cause the relay or whatever under my dash to go nuts? Have you heard of that before?
BTW I got the fuse cartages under the hood.

could be the fuse block itself then....I would think if it was making enough of a connection it would run and fight running...making noises. I have had the link go while the car was already running nothing really changed until the car was shut off and then tried to restart.

[sam.1956]

Your description of the noises definitely sounds like high-energy electrical arcing, as in the POS cable has the insulation worn off somewhere & is intermittently getting grounded.

[stefan]

A good cleaning of the fuse block seems to have fixed it. The clicking too... weird.

Heres my theory why multiple things went wrong at the same time; I left my lights on and killed my battery. At this point thats all thats wrong. When I was trying to figure out what the problem was I pulled the main fuse to check it. Little did I know it was badly corroded. Before everything worked because the corrosion was un-disturbed, but when I pushed it back in it didn't get good contact.

I'm preety sure that was my problem because before I cleaned the fuse block I checked the terminals with a tester and I had to scrape at it with the lead to get voltage.

[jglutz]

Stefan....dirty contacts could have cause the clickin in the main relay under the dash.
The voltage drop across the dirty conacts cause a low votage to the relay coil. When the coil energizes, the votage rops even lower and dthe coil disengages....the votage rises...the coil energizes...the voltage drops...the coil de-energizes....and so on. Just like starting a coil with a low battery and hearing the starter solenoid chater.