electrical problem

[gp02a0083]

ok well my car was doing this on and off for a little bit now its becoming more habitual . wehn i start the car i put it into reverse and it would jsut shut off no stall just shut off , same thing wehn i put it in drive. now last night wehn i was driving home when i used my directionals the battery light came on and it seemed like there was a electrical surge that also causes the headlights to sort of flash. this kinda stops wehn the car is warm but to me its looking like an electrical short , or bad ground. i checked the terminals on the battery and there ok im having a feeling its the altinator or the batter is nearly dead

[shepherd79]

i would check the alternator. take it to advance and they should be able to test you electrical system.

[Blkblurr]

Probably not your alt because you had enough battery power to start the car. My guess is you have a short or bad ground somewhere causing your injecters to stop or your spark to quit. Could be affecting your charging system as well which could make the headlights flicker.

[AC439]

Consider the age of our cars, I wouldn't surprise if there is a bad ground. My car have had several electrical problems that I had to run a wire parallel to the faulty to fix the problem. But trying to find the bad ground is difficult.

I recently came across "hypergrounding" by accident when I was researching the replacement of the battery cable and the 2nd grounding cable (between the valve cover and the front frame). So I replaced the negative bat cable, the 2nd ground cable and add a new cable between the neg bat terminal to the factory ground. After that, I feel the car idles and runs smoother. Then I added a short cable between the intake manifold and the valve cover. I also added a new short cable between the alternator bracket and the left inner fender close to the top of the strut tower. I also took out the ground ring terminal for the "octopus box" at the right inner fender above the strut tower, sanded both the ring terminal and the contact point on the fender down shinny, put it back on. The car feels even smoother and a small gain (maybe I should say recover) in power. I also found my injectors are not leaking anymore (I posted previously) after this mod (I don't know why).

What I'm saying here may not solve your car's problem. But if you suspect it's electrical oriented, you may want to give it a try. Bad grounding will make the electronic components and sensors off and give the ECU wrong input signal. Hope this helps.

-AC