Complete Electrical Failure - Nothing Works

[360glitch]

I've done my searching and have came up with nothing that's helped me. I had the radio on and had hooked up my datalogger cable (which did not work because I apparently cannot solder for anything). While I was playing with that the battery on my laptop died so I plugged a power inverter into the cigarette lighter. No go. Just got the car so I'm not sure if the cigarette lighter worked or not. At this point the radio is still playing and all is well. I turn off the car to go charge my laptop. Come back, go to turn the car on, and nothing happens. Nothing electrical works. No lights inside/outside the car, no ignition, nothing at all, whatsoever.

My first thought is I killed the battery with the radio on so I hooked up and charged it. 12.7v with the multimeter, the battery was good to go. The battery connections were solid. Still nothing. I checked the three big fuses on the positive terminal and they all looked good. I checked the 100amp fuse in the fuse box that is marked "alt" I believe, it looked fine. I checked a few other fuses and never came across anything that was bad.

Any advice?

 

[4g63and420a]

That is really weird. did u check the battery cables themselves? espically the ground, nothing will work without a good ground connection from the battery.

 

[360glitch]

That is really weird. did u check the battery cables themselves? espically the ground, nothing will work without a good ground connection from the battery.

The connectors on the cables and the terminals have been recently cleaned and are on there nice and tight. I'm still new to the whole multimeter thing, how to use it to make sure a ground is a good ground? The only thing I knew to do was to use the probes on the battery to check the voltage on it. I also traced the positive to the fuse box (where the 100 amp fuse is) and tested it from there and to the ground on the battery and still got a 12v+ reading.

 

[tunernewb92]

Yesterday we replaced the steering wheel, new radio put in, new non-turbo guage cluster put in (since we are getting an aftermarket boost guage), intercooler was taken off, cleaned, and reinstalled, leak test confirmed that we have a bad manifold gasket, and we cleaned the KN air filter and hacked the can.


Is there a "main fuse" to these cars that kills all the power.
Can a cell go bad and the battery still read 12.7 volts?
If the alternator fuse went bad (if there is one on this car) would that kill it?
Maybe a ground went bad in the two minute span of him killing and then trying to recrank the car?

 

[360glitch]

Yesterday we replaced the steering wheel, new radio put in, new non-turbo guage cluster put in (since we are getting an aftermarket boost guage), intercooler was taken off, cleaned, and reinstalled, leak test confirmed that we have a bad manifold gasket, and we cleaned the KN air filter and hacked the can.


Is there a "main fuse" to these cars that kills all the power.
Can a cell go bad and the battery still read 12.7 volts?
If the alternator fuse went bad (if there is one on this car) would that kill it?
Maybe a ground went bad in the two minute span of him killing and then trying to recrank the car?

It might be worth mentioning that we had to redo the radio harness yesterday but I feel like we did a pretty solid job with all of the wiring connections.

 

[steve]

Check the ignition fuse on the positive battery terminal.

 

[360glitch]

Check the ignition fuse on the positive battery terminal.

I checked that already. Looked fine. If it was this fuse would it cause everything to not function, the radio, headlights, ect?

 

[DougR]

Can a cell go bad and the battery still read 12.7 volts?


Absolutly! But complete Electrical failure is not a result of a dead cell.
My moneys on your Ignition Fuse.. I had the same problem after Arc'ing my Posistive lead on my alternator. Everything went dead....

On your meter, turn the knob till your on the Ohms test, touch the leads to gether. it will read out a resistance... Now press the button ( IF you have one ) that makes it beep, aka continuity test.
This is By far the best way to check Fuses. Just touch the metel blade ends that on the top of the fuse, while its still in the fuse box... If it beeps its good if not.. Theres the problem..

Sometimes a Fuse can blow in sutch a way that its very hard to make a visual ID of a blown fuse.

 

[steve]

Looks don't count. That's what you have that multimeter for.

You'll have to take the electrical diagram and start checking voltages to see what blew.
The power distribution circuit diagrams are in there.

 

[tunernewb92]

AND the mystery is solved guys,
It was a corroded negative battery terminal. Thanks for all the help we recieved, it will deff. help somebody in the future

 

[360glitch]

AND the mystery is solved guys,
It was a corroded negative battery terminal. Thanks for all the help we recieved, it will deff. help somebody in the future

Yep. It wasn't corroded right on the terminal but the ground cable did have a bit of hidden corrosion on it that a good cleaning took care of. Thanks for the help. Now if I can only get this intake manifold back on...

 

[luv2rallye]

...the ground cable did have a bit of hidden corrosion on it that a good cleaning took care of.

Ah yes...the old "connectors on the cables and the terminals have been recently cleaned" from post 3 no doubt!