Interesting no start...voltage relay? low amps from battery? bad cables? or worse?

[cbusenke]

Ugh! Dug myself in to quite a hole over time and it has made diagnosing this one, uh...interesting. It hasn't gotten expensive yet, but that seems to be the destination. Appointment at the Mechanic on Tuesday, I'm just sick of having the car always torn apart and I've burned out on my hobby of improving the car. I'd love it if you readers car or Vibe fanatics could brainstorm with me on where to look so I don't tear apart the whole car again.
The engine has been running fantastic, 2004 Pontiac Vibe, 16V 2WD, it's not a turbo or an all wheel drive. This is not the first engine, the odometer is maxed out at 299999. This engine has about 80k or so on it, still runs fine and the inside of the car is in great shape given the mileage. I put in custom HU, 4 infiniti speakers, replaced all the internal lights with LEDs and ran a power wire through the firewall to power an amp but that project stopped there. The wire is not connected it at either end. I mention it because the stereo work was redone a couple times to change head units, remove an amp a friend of mine fried and most recently to add an equalizer. However, at some point the control panel to the AC was disconnected from the cables and wires behind it(this was over a year ago) and the cables were such a (removed) to put back on, I had to disassemble the upper dash ultimately, not completely but damn close just to get enough room to get behind the control panel and snap the cables in to the proper connection so i could get the AC back up and working. I just wanted to make sure that I stated there's been extensive work, including disconnecting both air bags, removing the gauges display and putting that back on...so extensive work behind and inside the dash. For speed reading I put **** by important events related to diagnosing what's wrong.

Here's what happened, I was driving and I almost 100% certain, 2 events happened that intially led me in the wrong direction but since I'm not sure, I'll tell you blow by blow. Was on Freeway, car had been running normal lately, no issues anywhere. I had recently charged the AC because it was blowing air but wasn't cold. Turns out the high end valve seal was faulty, replaced the valve. Vacuumed it, it held the vacuum with no loss of pressure for 30 minutes, so i added refrigerant. All was well. I had cold air again. I let a little refrigerant out worried i may have overcharged it, but I was just being cautious. Few weeks go by, car sits dormant for 10 days while I'm out of town and when I return the AC is back to not being cold. I haven't researched this further. I assume it's the compressor. The next step with AC is optional and I know it will be expensive, so i left it alone. I gave a friend a lift and ****in the middle of our trip he pointed out to me that the lights behind the spedometer had just gone out. I said, yeah, they've been doing that from time to time lately. When I first got the car sometimes I would start it and the lights behind the dash wouldnt be on and they'd stay like that. Next time I started it they were. ****they'd never gone out in the middle of a trip before. Another week goes by and I'm on the freeway, didn't have problems accelerating or anything but suddenly the lights to the stereo go out for a second and when it comes back on, its apparent that it hadn't completely lost power but some kind of voltage drop or surge had occurred because it went to DEMO mode, which it does when it's completely disconnected from the power. HOWEVER, it remembered all the settings, which it doesn't do if it gets disconnected from power. Later, when I got home and poked around I dscovered a ground wire had come loose and dropped off the equalizer. The equalizer sits right below the HU but it isn't connected to power yet so the ground shouldn't have mattered.
****When this happened for some reason I got the feeling that the engine had gone dead but it hadn't. I was so surprised and so intent on getting over while I had the chance(it was rush hour and the stretch i was on was slim on places to pull over so i immediatley started getting over) but what do you know, the car was running so i continued on my trip and took the next exit. Less than 5 minutes later, I'm sitting at a stop light, waiting to turn left. I wanted to check out some things beofre I went further. ****Suddenly, the car went completely dead, radio, engine, everything. I turned the ignition key to the off position, waited about a second, then turned it forward. It started, no hesitation, no problem. I knew something was wrong and feared it. Two days later, I drove to walmart, parked, turned off the car. But changed my mind and decided to listen to a few more seconds of radio before i went in. ****Turned the key forward and a few dim red lights came on behind the dash, but they were very faint. (removed), but i'm in Phoenix and it was rapidly getting hot in the car so I ran in for maybe 10 minutes, came out and tried to start to the car. ****turning the key forward did not produce a clicking sound. I wiggled the key in the ignition slot and shook the steering wheel, thinking it might be an old key problem. In less than one minute, I did something and the car started right up. Drove home. *****the next morning, I wanted to find out what was going on so I went out to try and start the car. ****I turned it forward and there was nothing. I had left the door open and the door open warning light was pulsating, slowly and it was pretty dim. I messed with it for a couple hours trying to see what was going on, here are my obsercations:
****Sometimes the open door chime would ring, some times it wouldn't.
****A few times, there was a click or two and then those stopped all together.
****I had the overhead cabin light on, but when I would turn the key forward, all lights in the car would go dark.
****the windows are half rolled down, tried to roll them up, no response from the windows.
****so it seems to have voltage but limited voltage.
****I ended up checking water levels in the battery, I used about a third or close to a half of a gallon of distilled water, many cells were low but you couldn't see the plates in any, at least i don't think. More importantly, the voltage on the battery consistenly tested in the healthy voltage range and 12.5volts. I held a multimeter probe on the alternator and one on the negative terminal and got the same voltage read out. The terminals of the battery appear to be clean. One looks a little smuggy but there's no mineral deposits or anything.
****the lights on the dash are erratic, sometimes they're dim, sometimes all the ones that should light up actually do but most times there's a few pre-ignition lights but they're never as bright as they normally are.
*****i hooked out our car battery charger/jump starter to the terminals and plugged it in. Tried to start it and there is rapid clicking but the engine does not turn.

****I used to think that once a car starts, even if the battery is bad or it is dead, the car battery won't cause the car to die or anything. The voltage tests may show good voltage but I think it's possible with multiple cells low on water, that the battery has limited power to draw from. Can low water levels reduce the amp output of a battery? About a year ago, two at most, I had the starter replaced so i'm pretty sure it isn't that.
*****A friend suggested that maybe the voltage regulator is bad on the alternator or the alternator is bad.
****What if something other than an inactive ground wire came loose in the dash, could it cause the car to act like it is?
****I just went outside and tested the battery after filling it with water earlier today and the good voltage reading has done what I feared(because I was gonna feel stupid for not checking the battery earlier) and hoped(because there may still be a cheap way out of this). The voltage was 9.5, a bad reading. It was dark out so i turned on the cabin light to get my ratchets and turned on the headlights so i could see, nope. When I turned on the headlights the cabin lights went out. So, i switched the headlights off and grabbed the sockets I needed and went back up to switch. I turned off the cabin light and turned on the headlights, they were now so dim you couldn't really tell they were on. The quickly faded to black. Turned them off and tried the cabin light, nothing. So, in that short span of time I had sucked what little charge was in the battery out. I hooked up the battery and it will be charging all night. I'm hoping I'll go out there tomorrow and hook it up and all will be fine. In my life, luck had not really be on my side, so by default, I've learned that hoping and testing the cheap, easy, simple things as solutions to the problem is a waste of time. But, I should've known, after all I do live in Arizona and this place, especially in the summer, eats batteries for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I check all the fluids in my car on a regular basis....except the water in the battery evidently.

****I'm hoping tomorrow will be a good day starting with the battery presenting itself as the root of all my troubles. Signs are pointing to a strong possibility. Experience has taught me that hoping for this will lead to a let down. In preparation and desperation, because I really can't afford a new alternator or worse, I'm looking for other solutions. I don't have a belt tensioner so I don't think i can do the alternator repair on my own and it looks like the replacement of a voltage regulator, which appears lengthy, is simple BUT it looks like I have to remove the alternator and take it apart to get to it. IF that isn't true, please instill in me the confidence and knowledge of where to start to replace the regulator. Unfortunately, since the car doesn't start I can't take it to Autozone for any kind of free testing. If you know of some good diagnostic techniques, please fill me in. Or of testing equipment I can borrow or rent from Autozone, please let me know. Many, Many Thanks in Advance,
Chris

[andrewclaus]

Welcome to the forum. I see it's your first post.

Frankly, the post is too long and complex for me to read. I can't see the whole thing without scrolling. How about a summary of principal problems and what you've tried so far? Put the most important stuff first, please.

[jolt]

Adding that much water to a battery can take it down. You could try charging the battery at 10 amps or less for a day and see if the battery will come back up on voltage then have the battery load tested to see if it is any good. In newer cars with all the electric items, the battery is very important as it acts as kind of a surge suppressor for the electrical loads. A bad battery can cause all kinds of weird problems for newer cars.

From reading your post, it looks like you have a poor connection somewhere that is causing power distributions issues in your car. Poor or bad grounding can cause more strange things to happen as the electrons will follow the path of least resistance. If you have bad or poor grounding, the electrons can back feed through other wiring as they try to find there way home; in this case the battery. You said you checked the voltage from the battery to the starter but you also need the test for voltage drops in the cables. Test for voltage from the battery terminal to the starter post that the cable hooks to and also check from the negative post on the battery to the chassis ground.

Remember that the leads on your volt meter are measuring the potential difference between the two points that the leads are hooked to, this is measured as voltage. If the cable/connections are good between the two points on the cable/wire, the voltage will be zero. If you read voltage when connected from one end of the cable to the other end of the same cable, you have a bad cable. Bad grounds are getting to be common as these cars get older. I have had cables ends go bad from the inside so how the cable looks from the outside does not mean it is good. Loose wiring, bad connections, broken internal wiring from flexing can be found by looking for voltage drops. If a wire or cable is good and has 12Vdc at one end of the wire, it should also have 12Vdc at the other end of the wire. When putting your meter leads from one end of that wire to the other, the potential difference between those two points should be zero (12 - 12 = 0). If you measure any voltage, it is because of a bad connection/wiring and you have a voltage drop.

Odds on favorite is bad ground/grounds. You can never have to many grounds. Ground terminals in cars are crimp on terminals that are not protected from water and corrosion. They can go bad over time. If in doubt, clean the contact point down to bare metal and test for voltage drops at the connection point.

[tpollauf]

it looks like you have a poor connection somewhere that is causing power distributions issues in your car.

X2

Totally agree with that statement. The one thing I can summarize on your dissertation that you initially provided, is that your dash has been mutilated more than once and with all the on/off, in/out, of components in your dash, you likely have at least one "border-line" connection going bad which is causing you all this grief. Although your battery may NOW be defective, I doubt that it was part of your original problem. Something under/inside the dash is messed up and it may be a nightmare finding out what/where it is! Good luck

[Bookworm]

From personal experience, a bad battery can keep your car from running properly even if it's jumped separately. I had an old Ford Escort that I ended up drive 30 miles with the battery clamps wrapped in plastic and foam. Car wouldn't jump with the battery connected, I could start it off of the donor car. Put the cables down on the battery, instant death.

Also, if you had to put that much fluid into the battery at one time, that's not a good sign. I've done that myself, and watched a 'going bad' battery end up as a dead battery.

So, if the battery is at least two years old, in an extreme climate (Excessive cold or excessive hot), then I'd point at the battery itself being the root of the problems. The secondary problem is likely a bad ground somewhere, because with the battery in good shape, the system is probably putting out enough voltage to compensate for the poor ground (causing heating somewhere), but when the voltage drops to the minimum, there just isn't enough power flowing to make things light up correctly.