'98 SC2 Electrical Problems

[cybrsoldr]

My wife has a ’98 SC2 and it is having electrical problems. I have been driving her car full time since I am finishing an engine swap on my car. The car currently has about 73,000 miles on it. What is going on is when the car is running, anything that lights up (like instrument panel lights, daytime running lights, radio display, etc..) flickers and pulsates. When the brakes are applied all the lights dim as if there was some sort of surge. Sometimes it will get so bad that when the brakes are applied the power will just cut out for like a half second causing all gauges, lights and radio to go dead for that brief amount of time. The car will not stall when this happens and runs normally. First thing that came to mind is the alternator, so I went to Autozone to get it and the battery tested. Everything tested out ok. This is not the original alternator and was replaced before. The previous one tested fine by Autozone but was replaced at the dealer under warranty cuz the battery kept on being drained. But now on to more of the problem… Yesterday after I got out of work I get in the car and put the key in the ignition to start it, the car just died, no power. Nothing worked, no lights, basically everything electrical was dead as if the battery was disconnected. I popped the hood and checked my connections and everything looked fine. I kept going back and forth for about 5 minutes seeing if there was power and checking connections. Finally somehow power came back and was able to start the car. I have no idea what is going on. I don’t want my wife to get stranded somewhere when I give her the car back. Has anybody seen or heard of this happening at all? Any info or help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Greg
’98 Saturn SC2

[polarautumn]

I recently purchased a used 1998 saturn sc1 and encountered similar problems. Here's what I did:

Under the hood on the passenger side of the vehicle, there's a ground stud with a splice pack connected to it (on my car, it looks like a small rectangular plastic box with some black wires coming out towards the rear of the car).
1) Find this "splice pack".
2) Remove the bolt that is connecting it to the car's chassis.
3) Remove any corrosion from this bolt with a steel brush.
4) Mark the wires with tape or something to indicate which pin they are connected to.
5) Remove and then clean any corrosion from the pins.
6) Clean all corrosion from the piece of metal that the pins contact.
7) Remove any paint/corrosion from around the hole that the bolt threads into.

* After I did the above, the flickering running lights/instrument panel lights/radio lights all stopped flickering and now glow steadily. I hope that this helps you to solve your electrical problem.

Later,
Dave
'98 Saturn SC1

[sierrap615]

do the easy thing first, make sure the battery cable nuts are tight.

there are a few ground splice pack thru-out the body, the only two i've ever worked with are the one Polar was taking about and one in the same place on the driver side under the air box. the spice packs may be easier to work with if you remove the headlights. if you have a multimeter, do a voltage drop test on the battery cables and ground studs. if you don't have a multimeter, just replace the battery cables(both pos and neg)