Last night, my son called me from his gf house to say his 97, 2.3 wouldn't start. Of course I love to be called at 11:40pm to drive 20 minutes one way so I sprung out of bed to give him a jump.

After hooking him up to my ranger, nothing, no dome light, no click click, nothing. I checked the water level in the battery and it was a littl low but not dry. Added a little water, when he got in, the dome light was on. He cranked, one revolution, completely dead again. We left it there, but before we left, I toughed the cables together to see if he had any spark in his battery or if he was completely dead. Plenty of spark.

I didn't have any tools with me and it was approaching 12:30am, so we're going back in a little bit to clean off his terminals and the battery cables.

He had gotten the oil changed earlier Saturday. Besides cleaning up the connection, is there possibly anything else that could have come loose(got bumped) that is causing this? I am hoping it is just the cables or another loose connection. It's 7:45am ET and I'm leaving in an hour, so any responses in the next hour would be helpful.

Jim

 

Loose positive battery cable.

 

DUDE!!!!!!!!! Never short a battery terminals. It is basically a BOMB!!! Just imagine this. Your battery just exploded and doused you with melted Plastic, Liquid hot Lead the temperature of the surface of the sun and Boiling hot Sulfuric Acid. If you dont think that will happen then think again and if you dont thing that will hurt anything then take that battery, close the hood and dump all that harmless WATER out on the hood. After the acid eats all the paint off imagine that paint as your eyes.

Its just not good carma, dont short a battery EVER!!!!!

****

 

Appreciate it. I have never seen it happen, but I'll take your word.

 

When a battery charges it it takes the acid that basically turnes into a distilled water mix and converts it back to the acid. In doing so it releases H2 or Hydrogen out of the weak water acid mix. And these batteries as good as they try to make them still vent the Hydrogen. Hydrogen is HIGHLY explosive. Like C4 explosive. And that is bad.

Just think safe.

****

 

I dont think that was his question ??? As far as the REAL question .... you've already done everything I would have ... time to bring it to a shop .....

 

what brand battery is it?? it might be time for a new one, get the alt checked as well.

 

At one point I fried my ignition wires. I had used the switch 12v for signal going to a couple of other items, and about 3 months latter, while towing the RX7, I turned the truck off, and that was it.

 

Sorry, I feel kind of stupid. I posted this in another thread and closed it out already.

What happened was that it was the positive battery cable. The battery had shifted forward in the tray ad was grounding out the positve cable. Once I repositioned the battery in the tray and installed a block of wood in the front of it to keep it from sliding, it has been fine.

Either the battery is too small or I need to get a battery hold down, or both. It's running starting fine now. Walmart battery.