I'm hating life right now. I have to fish out an electrical bug in my b-series swap. I have a brand new battery which reads 12.5 volts. When I attach +/- wires to it the voltage drops to 2 volts. If I take the terminals off after a minute, it reads 8 volts. I checked Thermostat, chassis, tranny grounds etc. Any ideas? Sounds like a job for pizza covered in meat and beer. 2 ******* volts wtf!


Modified by LSV_REX at 7:48 PM 11/10/2007

 

A new battery should read 12.6. Yes it does make a difference.

Sounds like you have a major draw on your battery, like something is staying on. Also sounds like the battery is bad.

 

go pos to pos and neg to neg then crank, if it drops below 9.6 u got a bad battery but if its around 10 or 11 you need to get it charged.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Fezzie &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">go pos to pos and neg to neg then crank, if it drops below 9.6 u got a bad battery but if its around 10 or 11 you need to get it charged.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Kinda...

You need to load test it. Load it to half the rated cca for 15 seconds. If it dips below 9.6 in the first 15 sec's then it fails.

 

I'm waiving my frustrated flag right now. The battery is brand new. I'm going to load test it tomorrow. It is a possiblity that voltage drew on the battery and ruined it. The voltage drops so low that I can't explain it, then you take the terminals off and its voltage goes back up.

 

Sounds like you have something on in the car. Something is either a load or acting like a load.

 

when u put the negative cable on does it spark? if so you have some sort of short(s) in the system. inspect all the wires and connections at the fuse box where the 15amp fuse is. any leaks in the car?

 

I took every fuse out and I still can't find where the load is coming from.


Modified by LSV_REX at 7:49 PM 11/10/2007

 

I took the fuses out one by one to figure out where the load was coming from, but still something is drawing on the battery. Like I said before, you can actually watch the voltage drop while you look at the voltmeter. Its weird. Also that is a rather large load if you ask me.

 

try disconnect the starter, hook the battery, and check to see if any drop....
Seem like a short in the starter that I could think of that will draw your battery that fast to 2 volts.... Unless you have a big big powerful AMP

 

No amps. The car is strictly a shell with a LSVTEC setup. I disconnected the starter, still a voltage draw, disconnected the alternator, still a voltage draw, reground EVERYTHING still a voltage draw. And now I think the battery is fried. The only other thing I can think of is that it had an alarm at one point, and maybe during the uninstallation something may have happened, but the car ran before I did the swap.

 

i dunno if you got this fixed yet....but here's some advice for whatever its worth..uh

load testing your battery is gonna give you about 9 or whatever point something its supposed to read by loading it down with amperage. its brand new and it reads 12.6 your passed that step i wouldn't even worry about the battery...everyone is right here that a load is coming from somewhere....though it may be some resistance from a wire...

you could do a crank test on it...if you don't know how its not hard to find out..just use the red button. if not just ask

the red button is faster

 

It ended up being a bad battery caused by a draw from the radio, even though the car was off. (I didn't wire the radio into the car because it was already in the car.) The battery failed the load test so I got a new battery for free and traced the wiring with a tool that I forgot the name of and rewired the radio.