1996 Lumina 3.1L No Power

[MrGoodbytes]

Hi there. My father is having trouble with his car. Unfortunately, he's about 300 miles away and since I'm the family mechanic, I have to fix the problem over the phone. My wife owns the same car, so it's not too bad.

The trouble started a few days ago. He called one night to tell me that he was left stranded in the Wal-Mart parking lot. He went ahead and put a new battery in himself (in the rain, geez) since he's fairly handy with a wrench and all was well. Since I was told afterwards, and since everything seemed to work okay, I shrugged it off.

He called me today to tell me it did "the same thing." Now, I swear that I asked him we he first called if any lights on the dash came on, and I know he said they did but he claims that they didn't.

The situation right now:

Absolutely no power. No lights on the dash. No dome lights. No brake lights. No "recall the time" on the radio. Nothing.

Battery cables are still plugged on good and tight.

What the heck is going on??

He came out from work, drove a few "get out and go in" errands, came home, was inside for 10 minutes before going back out to the car.

I was thinking maybe a short killed the battery, but surely not in 10 minutes.

Any ideas? Maybe something loose in the jump-post/power distribution area?

[MrGoodbytes]

Ah, figured it out, we think. After many phone calls, he finally jiggled something near the battery cable and everything started working again.

He's going to park it until daylight tomorrow and investigate. I'm thinking that either the positive cable needs to be replaced, the bolt wasn't completely tight, or the cable from the battery to the power dist. box is faulty.

[maxwedge]

Correct.