if you had corrosion on one end of the ground wire, then I would look at the other end as well… the symptom “click then nothing and the radio goes dead” is indicative of too much current trying to overcome a grounding issue. If there is/was significant corrosion at the terminals, there could also be significant corrosion hidden by the insulation to the wires.
When you try to crank it, do any of the wires start to get super hot?
It probably wouldnt hurt to replace the ground from the battery to the chassis… You can test this theory by jumping the ground only to a new/different part of the chassis and see what happens.
After that, you continue to climb the tree… starter… etc…
I’ve had the same sort of starting problems with my 95 F-150 and 91 Mustang, both were cured by cleaning the battery terminals. For a 1984 vehicle I’d get the battery terminals and cables replaced, should save you a lot of trouble in the long run.
Does your T-bird not get driven very often? I think the battery terminal corrosion builds up more when the vehicle isn’t being driven every day.
Most recently, the car emitted no sound at all. And the horn sounded weakly, and the radio was weak, as were the headlights. A neighbor of mine–who has worked on the car–insisted that the battery (Acquired in July 2004) is shot, or the 3 cables–battery negative-to-ground, battery positive-to-relay, and relay-to-starter–are likely the problem.
In any case, I called the Auto Club. they came out but couldn’t start the car. So I had it towed to a nearby garage; the mechanic later told me he even got it running at one point, but the batter is running at 8 volts, andf the cables are likely the problem.
I had taken the car to a garage a block from home. The mechanic replaced the battery cables, and the car started up without further difficulty. I made four round trips between my home in Gardena and TBN, which is in Tustin, 35 miles away; traveling mostly on the freeway.
Sunday evening, when I headed home, I had been on the freeeway (The Santa Ana Freeway, I-5) only a few miles. It was after dark, and the dashboard lights went out. Then the engine started sputtering, and other things went out; I figured the car was about to stall and got off the freeway and off the offramp; I called the Auto Club. Something under the hood was apparently smoking, but by the time I got the car stopped the smoke was gone.
When the driver came I told him what happened and he said it was the alternator that had failed. Wouldn’t you know?
I’m skeptical about this, and I can’t help but wonder whether there’s any connection between this situation and the trouble I had with the battery cables and starter relay.
I would think it possible that a bad electrical connection to your battery could have overtaxed your alternator, they’re apparently not designed to have much of a load on them. Especially if you’ve never replaced the alternator, I think it’s well worth doing. Get another Ford one if yours is original. Try to stay away from “remanufactured” ones, I’ve heard sometimes those are just pulled off junkyard cars, cleaned up, and tested.
Not if bought from a reputable source, such as a Carquest or NAPA store. Some of the discount parts stores carry units that are indeed remanufactured, but are of poor quality.
The battery itself is now my prime suspect; the mechanic who worked in the carlast week came to my place (a block away) and told me the battery–two and a half years old–has given up the ghost. He doubted that the alternator is to blame.
On the Contour.org forums over the years, many people have said 2 years is about average. Maybe Contours are harder on batteries for some reason though.
Heat kills car batteries, but it is a slow death that shows up most often when it is cold. (Car won’t start one cold winter morn. The damage was done last summer)
Anyway the warmer the enviroment the battery lives in the shorter the life span. Also the cheaper the battery, the shorter the life span.
Off the top of my head, I have no clue where the battery lives on a Contour, but I will take a guess and say it is in a fairly warm enviroment. Perhaps near the exhaust manifolding.
Overall with a few exceptions* I have to agree with Gary T on this subject, it is not normal for a car battery to only last 2 years.
*The two that leap to mind are the Series I-III Jaguar XJ6 and the early Nisan 300ZX. Both of these cars had the battey mounted against the firewall on the exhaust side of the motor. Batteries did not last long in those cars.
Be that as it may, in 1982 I drove my 1970 VW Squareback–whose engine I had had rebuilt a few years before–to San Francisco, a distance of 390 miles (on US 101). About 70 miles south of the Bay Area, that Sunday night in January, it had started to rain. I drove the rest of the way, and got to my motel.
Monday afternoon was still a bit wet in the city, however…the car’s battery failed on California Street–between two cable cars! :eek:
The conductor and gripman helped me move my car out of the way; I called the Auto Club.
Later I went to the Sears Auto Center on Presidio Avenue–the battery was a Sears Die Hard–and bought a replacement battery; I got a good core discount for the other one, which was still under warranty.
Two days ago I took the car to another local mechanic who has already worked on the car’s electrical system. I told him what had happened so far and that the tow driver in Santa Ana suspected the alternator. He inspected the car and said, Sure enough, it was the alternator–a “diode” had apparently failed. I figure that an alternator, like the old-fashioned generator, is essentially the reverse of the starter motor, but what is a diode doing in the alternator? As it turns out, the alternator was hardly charging the battery at all–and I had made four 70-mile round trips (between Gardena and Tuistin) in as many days.
For all I know, it’s the original that was installed when the car was manufactured in the Ford factory. The car had been sold to Hertz as a rent-a-car, and my Mom bought it from Hertz when it was a year old; so far as I know, she never had trouble with the alternator all the time she used the car. So it’s the pristine product unless Hertz had to service it…
The diode (there are three of them) is used to rectify the alternating current the alternator produces into direct current that can be used to charge the battery & run the car.
Old fashioned generators generated DC voltage. The downside to them was twofold. First they were big and heavy. Secondly, and more importantly they had a very limited current output.
Alternators on the other hand, create A/C voltage. This A/C voltage has to be converted to DC in order to charge the battery and operate the various items in the car. The conversion is done by a Diode bridge (the circuit in your alternator is like the diagram at the very bottom)
When diodes fail, they either go open circuit or short circuit. If they go open circuit it reduces the amount of current available to charge the battery / operate the car. If the diode shorts then A/C voltage goes to the battery. the problem here is the on the positive half of the sine wave the battery charges, on the negative half it discharges. So as a result the battery never charges.
Be aware that many / most modern alternators are not designed to charge a dead battery, they are designed to keep a fully charged battery fully charged, or recharge a mostly charged battery.
