i know its not a 4x4, and its a long story so please bear with me...
i have a 96 toyota tacoma that serves as my beater... its a 2.4L 4 cyl. automatic truck... it all started when my brother installed a deck in our car... it was working fine for a couple months (about 6-8 months), and then the car just went haywire... for a while the car would not start at all... the steering wheel was always locked and the instrument cluster didnt work... the only way to start it was to get a wire and start it from the engine bay... we connect the wire from the battery to a wire in the harness... i'm not sure what this wire was for, but my brother in law knew and told us to do that for the mean time... eventually the battery got drained and we had to replace it... i bought a new battery for the car and to my surprise the car seemed like it was back to normal... i didn't have to do that ghetto starting routine anymore because i could start it inside the car now... the instrument cluster and everything worked perfect now... let my mom borrow the car and what do you know... i get a call from my mom saying that the car died... she was just driving and it just died in the middle of the road... this was a sympton of a bad alternator right??? so i changed the alternator and got a new battery (my brother is a manager at kragens so we warrantied it for free) for the truck thinking again the problem would go away... what do you know, the car has it's battery drained again... this time, it only took a few days to drain... so fast forward to thursday (december 8th)... my brother in law and his buddies came over to check what is wrong with the car... we tested the alternator and it overcharges which is a good thing... we checked the fuses... the dome fuse was blown and we fixed it... i asked him if the relay was bad but was told that these pickups had a built in relay into the alternator and not somewhere else... from what he told me, the car's charging system works fine when the car is on... BUT when the car is off, for some reason the car keeps trying to charge itself... that's the reason the battery keeps getting drained... he tells us that you could drive temporary the way it is, but take off the positive and negative wires to the battery when the engine is off... that worked for that day and the next when we had to use the car to take my brother in law and my sister's family to the airport cause they were moving... right after coming back from the airport, the same thing happened again... as of right now the car is dead... the instrument cluster is completely dead... the dome fuse also keeps getting blown... i checked it this morning and replaced it... it blew right away... can anybody give me any suggestions to what is wrong with the car??? any help and suggestion would very much be appreciated!!!
i have a 96 toyota tacoma that serves as my beater... its a 2.4L 4 cyl. automatic truck... it all started when my brother installed a deck in our car... it was working fine for a couple months (about 6-8 months), and then the car just went haywire... for a while the car would not start at all... the steering wheel was always locked and the instrument cluster didnt work... the only way to start it was to get a wire and start it from the engine bay... we connect the wire from the battery to a wire in the harness... i'm not sure what this wire was for, but my brother in law knew and told us to do that for the mean time... eventually the battery got drained and we had to replace it... i bought a new battery for the car and to my surprise the car seemed like it was back to normal... i didn't have to do that ghetto starting routine anymore because i could start it inside the car now... the instrument cluster and everything worked perfect now... let my mom borrow the car and what do you know... i get a call from my mom saying that the car died... she was just driving and it just died in the middle of the road... this was a sympton of a bad alternator right??? so i changed the alternator and got a new battery (my brother is a manager at kragens so we warrantied it for free) for the truck thinking again the problem would go away... what do you know, the car has it's battery drained again... this time, it only took a few days to drain... so fast forward to thursday (december 8th)... my brother in law and his buddies came over to check what is wrong with the car... we tested the alternator and it overcharges which is a good thing... we checked the fuses... the dome fuse was blown and we fixed it... i asked him if the relay was bad but was told that these pickups had a built in relay into the alternator and not somewhere else... from what he told me, the car's charging system works fine when the car is on... BUT when the car is off, for some reason the car keeps trying to charge itself... that's the reason the battery keeps getting drained... he tells us that you could drive temporary the way it is, but take off the positive and negative wires to the battery when the engine is off... that worked for that day and the next when we had to use the car to take my brother in law and my sister's family to the airport cause they were moving... right after coming back from the airport, the same thing happened again... as of right now the car is dead... the instrument cluster is completely dead... the dome fuse also keeps getting blown... i checked it this morning and replaced it... it blew right away... can anybody give me any suggestions to what is wrong with the car??? any help and suggestion would very much be appreciated!!!
