Electrical Problem

[alexcorbin]

Yes, I cleaned them up, and I put new battery connectors. The battery is 6 months old. I also use terminal spray. Yesterday I put a charge on the battery and was unable to get it started. I had it towed to a local garage last night and the mecanic said he put a charge on it today. He was able to get it started. I'm just wondering. My mustang has been in a humid place for awhile. I'm in the Airforce and I bought it off another GI. The car was bought in Hawaii, shipped to Korea and driven for less than a year. Then I was shipped to South Carolina. When I bought it it had 45,000 miles on it. I had it for two years in the south, then last summer we moved to Vegas. This is when I had troubles with the charging system. I put a new alternator on, battery, battery connectors and new pigtails. I noticed that I still wasn't getting a good charge. So I chased wires from the voltmeter to the alternator, fuse blocks and fuseable links. One thing I noticed, next to the parking break behind a removable panel, there is a large pin connector block. That had some small amount of crosion on it. I cleaned that up with some Deoxit contact cleaner and protectant. After that I started having a stronger charge. If Autozone load test their battery and they say its good. Could it still be a bad battery?
Its a intermiten problem. I have the car running fine for a week or two. Drive somewhere, park it and the darn thing won't start. Its get frustrating to call the wife from work to pick my tail up from somewhere.

[powerband chaser 302]

Ok, iv had this problem before. I had the same issues, battery was good, alternator was charging 13.6 volts but only like 4 amps. I had all sorts of electrical problems. Some days it would start like normal, other days it would just click or sometimes not even that. Leave it for a while and come back and it would start right up. I was thinking why the alternator was not charging, so to see if the grounding issue was a problem I took my jumper cables and connected the negative cable to the battery and the other end to the bracket on my alternator. Instantly my engine jumped up about 400 rpm in idle and all my lighs got brighter!! Bingo, I knew I had a bad ground somewhere now. I found that the negative battery cable connection to the block was corroded and making poor contact. I took it off cleaned it up and problem solved. This sounds like the only place you havent checked yet. Good Luck

[alexcorbin]

Thanks, I will check on that. I have added more grounds and and it has seemed to fix the problem. I'm suprised that a AST certified mechanic couldn't figure it out.

[surfbeast]

I had the same problem. I would be driving down the road and it would die. Then it would start right up and drive fine for a week. Ended up being a bad ground connection. I would replace the positive and negative battery wires and check a few of the other grounds. Mine was the ground wire that is on the drivers side right next to the radiator. After replacing wires and removing and re-attatching the ground wires I have never had another proble.

A Ford tech and 10 other mechs could not figure the problem out. I think Hammer gave me a clue and I ran with it and found the problem, that was about 2 - 3 years ago.

Good Luck.

[Hammer]

96-98 GTs are reknown for 2 things:

1. Crappy stock intakes
2. Grounding\Electrical problems