Battery often dies...

[DisLilN00Blet]

First I'm going to come out and say I'm a mechanic at all . I hardly know cars which is why I turned to this site seeing as how many people here have similar vehicles. I don't race the car nor have I attempted to mod it in any way.

Okay, my problem is that my car (1997 Eclipse GSX) often dies almost as if the battery isn't getting charged at all. The only modification on it is the turbo timer (came with it when I bought it) which, if connected, drains the battery even faster. I bought a new battery and a new alternator as recommended by a friend of mine and took it to the dealership to get it looked at and after 2 days they said that the only problem they found was my dead battery and loose battery connectors which they tightened. The car worked fine for about 2 days and now I'm having the same problem whenever I try to start the car it won't start. I should also add that while driving the other night (right before it died) the car lights would turn off and the gauges just totally dropped out even though the engine was still running and my car was still going! As soon as I reached a stop sign and pressed on the brakes the car died. Now the only way I can get it to even start is by a jump from somebody.

i've tried searching for similar problems and the only thing I've found so far talked about the terminals for the battery. Does that sound right in this situation?

 

[2roll4life7]

I was having similar problems as you, and I replaced the alternator and problem solved. And then I was wondering what other little things there are to improve the whole electric system and in the tech section I found a how-to on making your own grounding wire kit. I would recommend you try doing this, even though it may not fix the problem completely (who knows, maybe it will) I'm sure it will help either way.

Also, I know you just replaced your alternator, but if you want to make it last longer I would recommend making sure you have heat shields left in/installed properly because alternators tend to break really easy with high heat.

If you decide to make it yourself instead of getting one off ebay or whatever... Make sure if you have a few audio stores in your area, to call or drive by and get prices on their ground wire before buying. The first shop I went to wanted $4/ft for 4-gauge grounding wire and the second was for $2.50/ft. The article says 15ft of 4-gauge wire, but I only did 5 for now because that's all I could afford with the cost of everything else. From my understanding all the wires in the article are not necessary, but the more you have the better.

After just installing two wires in addition to the stock ones which I left inplace for now, I noticed brighter head lights and a bit of a smoother idle, etc.


Also, if you have the money... You might as well do the fuel pump rewire while you're at it because you can probably get the 10-gauge power wire you need to run to the fuel pump at the same audio store that sells the ground wire you need.

This is a little off-topic, but after I finished doing this I happened to discover that on the back of my jumptronix O2/volt reader there is a switch that when used will tell you the battery life in volts, which can be useful. So if you have an 02/volt reader, see if it came with something simaliar.

Good luck.