98 CL 3l would not start today. Would not crank. No dash lights, no seat power, no headlights, no audio. Dome lights work. Battery is new and fully charged. Engine fuse box is good.

I thought I would check the ground. G401. But I can't find it. The manual says it's behind the left kick panel. It is not, lol. I have the kick panel, knee panel, dead pedal, fuse box all removed. There is nothing connected to the body in that vicinity. Anyone know the location?

 

Well, I have bigger problems than checking the ground. The fuse box behind the left kick panel has between 1 and 6 volts at the fuses. The key is switching power to the different circuits. But none of them have full voltage. The fuse box under the hood has 12 volts everywhere, nothing blown.

 

At the fuse box harness connector for the ignition switch, measure the voltage on the white wire. If you leave the harness connected, you would backprobe the white wire. If you disconnect the harness connector, then test the terminal at the under-dash fuse box where the white wire would be.

 

Thanks for the help, 8.

12 volts on that white wire. Which I guessed from looking at the circuit diagram was the wire from the 50 amp fuse to the ignition switch.

So I put the key in and turned it on and checked the voltage on the black/yellow wire, coming back from the ignition switch. 1.9 volts? So I checked the voltage on the white wire again, 1.9 volts now? So I went to the underhood fuse box, low voltage everywhere there too. So I went back to the battery and took the cable clamp apart and found this situation. Bingo. Cleaned up the wires, put a new cable clamp on. 12 volts everywhere. Doh, I probably should have started there, but it looked good on the outside. I feel like an idiot. But thanks again for the help!

So I guess the lesson to be learned is that if you have a corrosion problem bad enough to cause a voltage drop, your voltage readings may vary wildly. They might be 12 volts, but as soon as you try to draw current, they could drop off to almost nothing.