My son has a '95 Civic EX. It has an aftermarket turbo installed and has been running fine. Eery so often the car 'glitches' and will not start. Nothing happens when you turn the key - no fuel pump or anything. Mu son sometimes can make it start by kicking the underside of the dash once or a few more times than once... Then the battery goes dead. It is a yellow top battery.

6 months ago he replaced the battery, alternator and starter. He also swapped out the main relay with a used one just to see... The problem suddenly re-appeared tonight.

Is there a short? Is there a component in the dash that could cause a constant drain on the battery? He has a Tubo timer and it said voltage was fine ealier today, no says no voltage???? Can the battery go suddenly dead? ???? ??? ???

In the words of Charlie Brown: AAAUUUUUUGH! Can anyone help, please...????

Thanks


Modified by wambus at 3:56 AM 6/10/2005

 

First off, check the battery connections. If one of them is even slightly loose, it could not be making good contact. Second, does it have an alarm in it? Or remote starter? If he kicks the dash and it works, it sounds like a bad connection someplace. If you aren't good with 12v electrical, i wouldnt recommend diving into this. Can be extremely confusing. Good luck!

 

It does have an alarm, but no remote starter - that was the first thing he had put in. This problem did appear before the turbo was installed....

 

Sound like theirs a problem with the turbo timer. Check the connections. When your installing a turbo timer make sure you dont clip any igniton wires under the dash

 

start the car if you can and unplug the battery and see if the battery light turns on, if so the alternator is bad

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by solareclipseauto &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">start the car if you can and unplug the battery and see if the battery light turns on, if so the alternator is bad</TD></TR></TABLE>NO NO NO

the battery works as an electrical dampner for the entire electrical system. that is a test suitable for cars made 30 years ago. NOT anything with a computer.

it sounds like the main relay honestly.

 

But would a defective main relay cause the battery to go stone dead all of a sudden?

 

hmm...anything is possible haha
could be shorted on the inside or something. i mean your kid does kick the dash

 

What do you think about the alarm idea? I wonder iff hte engine 'lockout' is not dienaging when the alarm is turned off. Then he kicks the dash and something trips in the control module. I still do not know what the battery drain would be caused by.

He just called me and said he has a charger on it where he is at right now. The charger indicates that the battery is 'full', but when he tries to start the car he gets clicking and the turbo timer says the battery is dead....

 

this could be 2 seperate issues. the battery being toast is possible. id have it checked at vatozone or checker. just because it reads full it dosent mean it holds a load.

 

The factory battery ended up toast so he bought one of these yellow-tops. That lasted only a cuple of eweeks and then this all started again. That was when he replaced the starter and alternator, then a second yellow top.

I would be curious to know why the battery continues to become toasted. He did have the starting problem last summer - stopped to get gas aand the car would not re-start. He waited a while and then it started... But this dead batery problem did not pop up then.

They may not be related, but they seem to occur toether at least to some degree...

 

its possible the yellow top was bad right out of the box

its rare, but it does happen. in the year i sold batteries i saw it once.

if its only a few weeks old its well under warranty, test it, replace it. if it happens AGAIN there is a serious electrical problem probably related to the charging system.

 

What other components are there to check?

By the way, I really appreciate all the input I get whenever I come here. I hope someday I'll have the opportunity to share some of my knowledge with others. Pay it Forward.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by wambus &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">What other components are there to check?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Grounds - grab some sand paper, find all the grounds and clean'em well.

Where he is kicking the dash to get it to start - is that also where the alarm ECU is?

 

The alarm cpu is up above the kick impact area, but I am unsure if the kicking is actuallu affecting it - if I remember correctly, it is connected to stuff that is not directly connected to the dash. I am not ruling this out though - could the alarm drain off the battery? We postulated that maybe the engine kill funtcion is not de-activating when he disconnects the alarm. But is there some function of the alarm that could cause a battery drain or affect the charging system?

 

Sounds like it might be a weird main relay problem.

BTW, kicking too hard under the dash can activate the decelerometer trigger for the SRS and deploy the airbags.

 

You have access to a ammeter? Can you check the current draw from the battery as it sits? Have you tried disconnecting the alarm?

 

1. Airbag is already de-activated - oops while working on something else. Pulled the wrong wire - fixed it but did not re-set the system.
2. We are looking for the manual for the Alpine alarm so we can figure out how to discoonnect it without causing more problems.

We thought main relay also, so my son grabbed a used one at the junk yard to swap out just for 'kicks'. Can you get a relay tested? Is this a problem that may not reveal itself in a test?

 

Older main relays tend to have solder joints that crack over time and they usually fail when hot. You can always take apart the main relay and use a solder iron to touch up the joints.

 

I will suggest that to him. His old guitar amp had a crack in the circuit board that we fixed that way...

Anything's worth a shot.

 

ok - now he has called me to tell me that the caris running, but he can't shut it down. The turbo timer did not come on - it just won't shut off.

What can one do to 'kill' the motor?

 

pull the fuse to the ECU, also the backup