Hi, hope somebody can help me troubleshoot. I've read a bunch of posts and can't find my exact situation. My wife's LX recently had the battery light come on, and eventually the battery died. Of course we were on the coast above San Francisco about 150 miles from home. The battery light came on and the battery gauge was noticeably lower, but above the half way mark. We drove another 30 miles maybe trying to figure out what to do or where to end up if we were to have a dead battery and be stranded. The gauge then dropped below the half way mark, then a bit more and all the lights came on across the dash, and we lost power and luckily made it to a decent place to call for help. We could not restart as the battery was dead.
My initial assumption is this is the alternator. I recently replaced mine in my 100 series. Similar situation, battery light came on, however I had high pitched whine for a couple weeks prior so I was expecting it.
One thing my wife has been dealing with. The negative battery terminal connection has been very bad, it's in a way where it won't tighten all the way down on the terminal and stay tightly connected. When we bought it, there was no battery strap holding the battery in place. The battery would bounce and slide around. We didn't realize this until the car wouldn't start. Thought it was dead battery, but turned out she just had to wiggle the connection and she could then start it. She's had to do this a few times over the past couple months. I've put grease and tightened the connection but obvious it needs a better fix with new cable and connector, just haven't got to that. The day the car died, the connection was quite loose. I could pretty easily slide it off the battery.
So my question, before assuming alternator, could the loose connection at the battery terminal be the problem? I assume the alternator charges the battery while running and bad connection could prevent that? I'm still learning, this may be a dumb question. The tow truck driver gave it a change to drive it on the truck and brought it home. It has started up since. I plan to drive it down to have the neighborhood parts store check the battery and alternator but wanted to check here as well. Any thoughts? Thanks!
My initial assumption is this is the alternator. I recently replaced mine in my 100 series. Similar situation, battery light came on, however I had high pitched whine for a couple weeks prior so I was expecting it.
One thing my wife has been dealing with. The negative battery terminal connection has been very bad, it's in a way where it won't tighten all the way down on the terminal and stay tightly connected. When we bought it, there was no battery strap holding the battery in place. The battery would bounce and slide around. We didn't realize this until the car wouldn't start. Thought it was dead battery, but turned out she just had to wiggle the connection and she could then start it. She's had to do this a few times over the past couple months. I've put grease and tightened the connection but obvious it needs a better fix with new cable and connector, just haven't got to that. The day the car died, the connection was quite loose. I could pretty easily slide it off the battery.
So my question, before assuming alternator, could the loose connection at the battery terminal be the problem? I assume the alternator charges the battery while running and bad connection could prevent that? I'm still learning, this may be a dumb question. The tow truck driver gave it a change to drive it on the truck and brought it home. It has started up since. I plan to drive it down to have the neighborhood parts store check the battery and alternator but wanted to check here as well. Any thoughts? Thanks!
