1997 Buick Lesabre dead (then alive for a while)

[bachdog]

Hi,

My 1997 Buick Lesabre started have some intermittent electrical problems over the last couple of days. The remote wouldn't work and then it wouldn't start for a few minutes. Also, the warning lights started to flicker and the car felt like it was ready to cutout one time. My wife also mentioned that it felt like the left tire was rubbing at some point, but that may have nothing to do with this problem. Anyway, my wife was driving today a few miles from home when the car suddenly died. No sign of life. Absolutely zero power. She got some help to push it off of the main road. When I went to pick her up, I tried to figure out what was going on. The battery was reading 12V, but I hooked up some jumper cables anyway. Absolutely no affect. Still no power. At some point I disconnected the battery cables from the battery to do some troubleshooting. I promised to take my son to the Yu-Gi-Oh movie so I left the car, with the batter cables disconnected. I came back later and did some more troubleshooting to no avail, so I hooked the battery cables back to the battery. When I tried the key, the car turned on! It rose from the dead, but only for a short time. Probably not a wise thing to do, but I turned the car off for a little bit, and when I tried to turn it back on, it wouldn't crank. You could just hear a clicking noise (the starter?). It had power this time (lights, radio, etc.), but no muscle to turn the car over. The power remained while I did some more reading, etc. I don't know if disconnecting the battery cables had any affect, but I disconnected them again before calling it a night. I'll know more tomorrow if reconnecting them and the car starts again.

Anybody have any idea what's going on? Bad alternator? How come attaching some jumper cables to another car has no affect? Any other possibilites?

Thanks,

Mark

[dpalomaki]

Do any electrical accessories work? Lights, radio, etc.

[yogi_123rd]

You very probably have a bad alternator.

If you manage to start the engine, check the voltage. It should be charging up the battery with 13.5-14V.

I had a simular jump starting incident. I found out that the jumper cables must be connected about 30-45 minutes to CHARGE up your dead battery rather than run on the other cars good battery.
It seeps in ever so slow. Don't understand this is so though. Suspect its a quirk of the DELCO type charging system.

[tman]

clicking tells me starter, but are the battery terminals corroded?

Take the alternator to autozone, and they'll test it for free.

[bachdog]

Thanks everybody for your excellent input and advice. Let me updated you on the latest from my car.

I stopped this morning where I left it and hooked up the battery cables to the battery. Everything was dead. I was surprised because some power was there when I left the car last night with the battery cables unhooked, so I unhooked them once again and reinstalled them, this time really tightened down on them. The car fired up and I was able to drive it home. I thought to myself that maybe it was the fact that the cables had come loose over time. Once home, I stop and started it with no problem a couple of times. Early this afternoon, my wife started it with no problem but when she went to start it later on, it was dead again. She tried a little later with the same result. I assume that no power was there at all, but I didn't ask her.

Based on the above, do you all think it's possibly bad battery cables or corroded battery terminals like tman2093 says? The battery doesn't have posts. The cables are attached to the battery via screws. I need to take a closer look for corrosion. What's the best way to get rid of corrosion? The old pour some coke or pepsi on it trick?

Mark

[tman]

Look at the terminals, if they have a greenish residue in them, take a wire brush to them and clean them.

[bachdog]

Hey tman2093,

My friend and I check a lot of connections, relays, and fuses, and they all checked out. We finally said, "Lets clean the battery cables." The positive battery cable definitely showed a lot of corrosion (greenish residue). I separated the parts of the positive cable the best I could and cleaned them with baking soda and a stiff brush. I also cleaned the area of the battery where the cable is attached via a screw. The positive cable was definitely a lot cleaner once I was done. The negative cable looked perfectly clean, which I guess isn't unusual. Anyway, we hooked up the cables again and the car started like a champ. So far, so good. It's started up since early evening and has continued to start up at various times through the evening.

My friend and I are fairly certain this was the problem based on everything else looking good and the strange way the car kept dying. I'll keep a close eye on it over the next couple days and let everyone know.

Thanks for all the help,

Mark

[bachdog]

So far, so good. Everytime I've started the car, including this morning, it has fired up.