my 1993 oldsmobile royale 88 keeps dying recently. my battery has not been holding a charge for more then a few hours. around the same time my distributor cap has formed a small hole or crack and is arcing to the bolt that holds it in place. Could this be the cause of my battery not forming a strong enough charge?
Tough problems but I’m leaning toward independent issues.
Does the battery discharge while the car is off?
well id figure so, because i can drive around, turn off my car for a few hours, and then turn it back on. its only over night that my battery loses a strong enough charge to start
How old is the battery?
Just about two years old, but the battery seems fine.
A cracked distributor cap shouldn’t cause your battery to drain when the car it not running. It will cause hard starting and make your engine run rough. It will also strain the ignition coil.
Your battery could simply be getting old and no longer holds a charge or you may have poor electrical connections at the battery terminals or your alternator could be failing.
First thing your may want to do is disconnect both cables from the battery and clean the cable connectors and battery posts and then reconnect them. Just doing this often solves many battery related problems.
Thanks steviep24, ill try cleaning them, but id just figured with all that power being wasted from the arcing on my distributor cap could just cause the car not to build up a strong enough charge while running. seeing how both problems happened at the same time.
No, the spark is coming from your coil and then going to ground through the cap instead of going to the spark plugs as it should. The coil is not putting out more spark or using more voltage just because the current is going to ground.
The engine cannot possibly be running as it should though. You really should not be driving it until you fix that by installing a new distributor cap. The slightest gas leak or vapor could cause an engine fire.
Your battery may be shot, but getting that cap fixed should be your priority. It is dangerous, your dying battery is not.
Has your battery gone dead from your having left the lights on or something like that? Completely discharging a typical lead-acid car battery significantly decreases it’s life and will result in it not holding a charge - especially if this has happened more than once.
There are special batteries called deep-discharge batteries that are designed for this sort of abuse that you can buy if this is a recurring problem. I think there is a brand from Exide called “Orbital” that is the deep-discharge type but is expensive. Marine batteries tend to be designed this way.
edit: there are also batteries that have a “reserve” feature so that they cannot go completely dead and will always have enough charge left to start your car.
I have had cars come in complaining of shorts draining down the battery that turned out to be stuck relays in the fuse box area usually. A real common one is horn will be unplugged because it kept honking but engine goes dead overnight. A stuck horn relay causes this. If any relays feel warm to the touch after car has been setting they should be changed.
Do the newer cars have breakers instead of fuses? Seems like they should by now.
Automotive circuit breakers that can be used in place of fuses have been around for decades. I’ve only seen them used by car manufacturers in a very few types of circuits, such as power windows and power seats.
Distributor caps are also pretty easy fixes. Take your time, move one wire at time to the new cap so you don’t mix them up, and you’ll have it done in 10 minutes.
Sounds like a short. You can get a battery disconnect switch if you can’t find the short. One way to narrow it dowb is to remove fuses one at a time overnight until the discharging stops.
An easy way to check and see if a short is present is to disconnect one battery cable and run a light bulb between the cable and the battery instead of using a ground connection. If the short is a small one the light will glow dim, the larger the draw the brighter it will glow. If the light does glow start disconnecting fuses until the light goes out, this will tell you the circuit. Normaly if you have a direct short the fuse will just blow. If a trunk light is on, or a light under the hood is on you may not notice it.
The idea behind wanting breakers is understandable: if a circuit breaks, I just have to reset the breaker. The problem is that the electrical problem which caused the excessive amperage to break it in the first place still remains. Simply resetting the breaker without dealing with the underlying issue means a higher chance of damaging something in the electrical system that the breaker is designed to protect.
Fuses are cheap and should never blow unless there is a problem. Using breakers in their place is an expensive proposition with little payoff.
To the OP: You have a battery drain somewhere, and probably a big one. If not a big drain, your battery is probably bad. First step is to check battery voltage both when the car is running and when it’s off. Off, voltage across the posts should be 12-13V (typically 12.7V). Running, the voltage should be 13-15 (typically around 14V). If running voltage is lower than 13V, your alternator (or maybe voltage regulator) is bad.
When my old Plymouth of years gone by had this problem, it was the alternator that was causing it.