dave1123

Okay, it happened to me! The thing I keep talking about with the positive battery cable end. I tried to start it. Click and the lights go out. Okay, so I know what it is. Right. No tools. I twist the cable end and it's loose so I pull it off. I take my Buck knife and scrape the post and the inside of the clamp. Hammer it back on with my knife and try to start. It starts but won't stay running without my foot on the pedal. The second time I try to start it, the speedo and tach peg out and go to zero but it starts and dies. I cycled the alarm twice and now it stays running. sounds good, all the gauges work EXCEPT the speedo and tach. WTF! The odometer counts the miles and it runs good all the way home, restarts twice in the driveway.

My Question; what's with the speedo and tach?

dave1123

Update!

Today, it's pouring rain. Wonderful. It's about 34*F with light wind and I don't have a garage. I rigged up a tarp to work under, getting wet while doing it.

I inspected the cable end and saw the wires were green where they went into the molded end so I cut it off, cleaned them up with Braklene, and put on a bolt-on end. The beast fired right up and everything works!

It must be I was loosing enough voltage on the PDC wire so the tach and speedo wouldn't function. Just goes to show you how much good connections are nessesary for the systems to function. The dash voltmeter was showing 14.5 volts before I replaced the end and is now showing 13.75 volts. The battery is a 3 year-old Interstate 825 CCA with fluid check caps and tests perfect. This is the first time I've had electrical problems with my WJ and it was a simple fix.

radicalvette

Good job...

Keith333

Yes, good job and thanks for sharing your experience. My recent experiences plus yours you've shared here lead me to believe our beloved GC's are a bit temperamental when it comes to electrical juice and connections. As perhaps they should be (?) and they're probably not alone.

You may recall my recent experience while replacing the power window motor in my driver door and the door lock switch not working (or only partially working?) during the motor replacement in-process testing but worked fine once the job was complete and I cranked up the engine. Plus the remote locking /unlocking worked fine throughout despite the door switch not working. I didn't drive it for 2 or 3 days after that but when I did (after dark one evening) the lights that normally flash when remotely locking/unlocking weren't working, but I had left one of the overhead console lights on and apparently that had drained the battery enough to have an adverse affect but the locks themselves worked fine and it cranked over and started good as ever. The remote lock/unlock lights worked fine after cranking the engine.

On a related side yet non-Jeep note, I had an 87 Ford Ranger a few years ago and it wouldn't start one afternoon when trying to leave the Sears parking lot. If I recall correctly, all the electrical stuff (lights, radio, etc.) seemed to work fine but was stone dead when I turned the key and wouldn't turn a lick. Nothing. I checked all I knew to check (which wasn't much) and finally called my long time mechanic friend and guru (then retired). He drove a 90 or so Ranger and his experience was that if you don't keep the battery terminals and connectors really clean on these Fords (and maybe other models) they were prone to doing this. Sure enough, all he had to do was loosen the terminals, clean them and re-install them and she cranked right up. And while they weren't spotless, there was no corrosion or anything evident to the naked eye that would have caused this. They seemed to be good, tight and clean terminal connections -- except the engine wouldn't crank. I recall years ago a friend of mine had a 68 Dodge (318) that ran fine while idling but would start to miss and make all sorts of noise when he pressed the accelerator and put a load on it. That tuned out to be a small what he called a "carbon crack (a small line of carbon build-up like a little lightning bolt)" within the distributor cap from one terminal to another that didn't affect anything at idle but would short things out under a load. I'm thinking the battery terminal failure may have been something similar -- a little carbon build-up within the terminal connections having an adverse affect.

Just my 2-cents. Thanks again for the share.

dave1123

I'm telling you I've been a Chevy man for a lot of years and we never seemed to have as much trouble with the side terminal system as other cars have. I'm SERIOUSLY thinking about changing my jeep over as soon as I need to buy another battery. I think the reason for the lack of trouble is the cable ends are molded in rubber and the battery terminals are harder to take the torque of the bolt. They are probably zinc instead of lead. That makes for a lot less corrosion. The only thing I haven't checked yet is the location of the battery terminals polarity wise. If it's a problem, I may have to cut open my harness and re-arrange the cables.