Son ran his XJ off the road and not it is dead. Key on and NOTHING

This was intermittent at first - he said sometimes he would hit a bump and for a split second lose everything.

Sometimes he had to restart with key other times it was just a hiccup.

Now it seems to be flat dead.


What should I look at first?


THANK YOU ALL !!!!!!

After he ran it off the road is completely dead as in you turn the key no electrical no start nothing?...replace the battery

Measured Battery Voltage = none

Hooked charger/starter to battery = Nothing

I disconnected ground terminal from battery and hooked up the charger and the it looked like the charger is working - maybe.

When I tried to reconnect ground to battery with charger running everything went dead.

It's like there is a short to ground somewhere.

I'm at a loss and it is snowing and cold outside!

Sounds to me like battery is shot take it to the local autozone and get it tested be prepared to buy a new one slap it in and away you go

Pulled the battery, but it might be looking more like a short in the positive cable somewhere.

At the base of the positive terminal there is a blob of what looked like molten metal ( solder ). It's new because it is shiny and likes like it might have come out of the connector on the cable and not from the battery terminal.

Just what jhouse said and make sure you check the fuses in the pdc. The shock from the battery shorting our going bad, if this is what happened, could have fried your main fuses.

Maybe the molten material blew out of the battery terminal .... here is a pic.

Yup. Looks like the battery itself or the positive cable was able to do a direct short to ground. Replace the battery and the positive cables, check your fuses. Should be good if nothing else was damaged.

TERMINAL PIC .....

Look up where hood sits over battery ?

Hood looked clean, no signs of arcing.

An ohmmeter concocted between the positive battery cable to ground ( battery removed from vehicle ) read damn .000 ohms on the 2k Ohm scale.

Tomorrow I plan on removing positive cable from starter and rechecking as above.

It's cold, raining, snowing and I am recovering form pneumonia .... I'm done for the day. ( my son thinks I should be out there working on it until it is fixed. LOL he's got a lot to learn )

Buy kid gloves...

Thanks!

I'm thinking of what I am going to be looking for tomorrow.

Looks like the positive cable runs to two places.

Down to the starter and over to a distribution box.

Considering the short to ground reading, I think it may be easy to see.

In the old days we would disconnect everything, and reconnect one circuit at a time but with this thing blowing out that terminal, it has to be a hard and heavy short.

You can disconnect negative battery post and use a test light on the cable end and battery post .Start removeing fuses until light on test light goes out . In the old days we did it this way.

Does the battery show any voltage off the vehicle? Can you charge it out of the car? Is the battery toast?