Car just shuts off

96 lesabre:

Kid is driving his car and out of nowehre the car will just shutoff. Tries to restart it and nothing. No dome light no horn no door ajar dinging,no clicking, DEAD. After anywhere from 10min-1/2 hr the car will start and away he goes. Just came back from advanced and they checked both alternator and battery and both are fine.

Would this be a possible short somewhere where a bare wire is touching metal ? Only thing that he has done prior to this is installed a after market radio and he now just informed me that with the passenger window you can out it DOWN from the drivers side but you can't put it up from the drivers side.

I had a 89 beretta where every morning I wold go to start it and found a dead battery. With the car off I pulled every fush there was and tested with a test light until I found one that made the test light light. This is only finding a "OPEN circuit" if it lights correct?

Any suggestions ? oh by the way he's 20 so I know what some will say first, lol. REMOVE that aftermarket radio, lol

Thanks

I'd be looking at a bad gound from the battery to the chassis for starters.

It sounds like the trouble might have started after installation of the radio. My guess is that the battery was disconnected during the install & you now have a poor or loose connection at the battery. Some of the GM cars have two battery cables that come together under a single rubber boot. Remove the bolts & the rubber boot from the cables and clean the cable ends with sandpaper or wire brush. Apply dielectric grease to help prevent future corrosion & reassemble. Let us know what you find & we'll proceed from there.

Any Luck?

Well I always liek to teach young kids a lesson: When I sent him to the local parts store I told him(after checking myself) to make sure the battery terminals were tight. I had him take it to my mechanic(who I thought would charge him a small fee)., My mechanic found(not 100% sure though) that the loose + terminal was arcing<sp> and cutting out the vehicles. When it would do this it was slowly melting the rubber gromet around the + terminal bolt thereby creating an even more terrible connection. So he replaced the rubber and tightened down the terminal and the kid has taken the card for about 3 days with NO trouble at all.

The give away for me was the battery gage inside the car. It was reading below 12 but yet when checked at the battery it was normal. This tells me bad connection. So hopefully this solves his issue

I had this same problem with my daughters 95. I took it to a battery shop because I thought it was bad battery cable and the dealer wanted $95 for the cable. The battery shop told me there was nothing wrong except GM put both positive cable in the same red cover. There was a lot of corrosion in the red cover. He sold me a special adapter post that you put one cable then put the post in the battery and then put the other cable on. You can get these at auto zone or other parts houses. No problems since I done that. It has been 4 years.