vashts1985

ok, so i have been using my mothers grand am to shuflle to and from work for a couple weeks and the other night it would not start for me. when i opened the door everything was fine but when i went to start the car, as soon as i turned the key past the ON position everything went dead, everything, headlights, dash, interior lights. everything that normally is powered by electricity just blinked out, like there was no power supplied to it. in addition when tryed to start, there was apsolutly no response, no clicks nothing. i could no longer turn the key back past ON and remove the key. after a couple minuets. the park indicator on the dash light up (and only the indicator) and i could now turn the ignition to off and remove the key. i figured it to be a drained battery so i had a co worker set up to jump me. i never did actually jump it, but i had put the cables in place on the grand am. all of a sudden the power comes back, headlights and everything come back on and the car starts back up (when it turned over it sounded a little drained, the radio had reset and using the rear defrost seemed to drain a bit of power.) now sence then it does this from time to time, usually popping the hood, opining it then closing it will bring the power back on and it will start and drive without problem. just tonight though, after going through this ordeal, it decided not to start, it would try and as soon as it fired it would die. after reading a bit about similar problems with the BTSI system but it seems more than that, like a short that is draining the battery. note that recently i replaced the passenger side headlight and had fiddled around with the battery a bit (moved it around a little, didnt disconnect anything) before i figured out the correct way to remove the headlight bulb, could this be related to the problem. any other ideas that might help here?

grfnkl

Welcome to the forums.

Was the battery ever replaced in the car yet? I would check your connections to your battery, I have a feeling that they are not making proper contact causing the car to go dead. I had this same thing happen, the car would have power until you turn the key and then the car would be dead, with no power at all. If i let it sit, then i would have power again and then i could start and go along. If i slamed the hood i would have power again, or if i played with the key in the ignition i would randomly get power again. So check your battery cables make sure they are making proper contact, ( my mechanic removed the rubber rings around the contacts and put a washer on to remedy the situation) Also check your ground wire make sure that nice and tight. Good Luck

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xeroinfinity

with grfnkl !

Check those connections

Your battery should read about 13.4volts when the car is off and about 14.5 when its running. You can test this with a multimeter(voltmeter).

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1999 Grand Am SS & Grand Am GT 3.4 OHV


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boug0752

I'm in agreance as well. I had issues when putting the battery connectors back on my car once. All that rubber crap and not a lot of room for mistakes make bad connections to the terminals a common thing on Grand Ams. If this is not it, I would consider taking the headlight back out and checking to make sure that upon repositioning of the headlight you didn't pinch any wires causing a short there.
Let us know if any of this works for ya.

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vashts1985

yeah, was the cables. thanks for the advice