My truck died this evening.<\/p>\n
![\"dead](\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180213235517\/http:\/\/dougbittinger.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Dead-Truck-170711-300x169.jpg\")
It\u2019s been running fine. At least it has since the last time I had it towed in and repaired.\u00a0 That’s been a few weeks.\u00a0 I moved it so I could mow the driveway (yes, I mow my driveway) and when I went to move it back it started up, started to move then went completely dead. I mean big blue rock dead. Nothing at all, not even an idiot light lit up.<\/p>\n
To make this short(ish) I fixed it. But what I found to be wrong is SO bizarre I have no idea how it got that way and was running at all.<\/p>\n
It is running now. I told my boss that I do plan to be at work tomorrow after all. But if I don\u2019t make it, check for reports of alien spacecraft sightings!<\/p>\n
I checked the battery with a 12 volt circuit tester (basically a wire with a light bulb in it) and the battery was putting out some juice, so it didn\u2019t melt down.<\/p>\n
So I checked (and cleaned) the battery cable connections. They look fine.<\/p>\n
Some cars have a fusible link in the positive battery cable. I don\u2019t know if mine does or not but I tried to look. Since the cable goes into a flexible plastic conduit: results inconclusive.<\/p>\n
I checked the negative cable too. There are actually three cables coming out of the battery clamp (though it\u2019s not a clamp any more). One of these cables was just hanging down, tucked in among the hoses and various lines. I wondered about that. It is possible the third wire never was needed: there are many power accessories I don’t have.\u00a0 I crawled under to see if anything looked like a wire had come loose, but could see nothing obvious.<\/p>\n
So … negative battery cables usually go to grounds of some sort. Can\u2019t hurt to ground it against something big and metal and see if it helps, right? So I wiped off the gunk and poked it into a crevice in a pump mount. climbed into the truck and tried the key.<\/p>\n
Low and behold, the dash lit up! Twist it some more and the starter spins and the engine fires right up. Problem solved. Kinda.<\/p>\n
I shut it off and crawled under again to see if I could find where the cable was supposed<\/em> to be bolted down, but still could not see anything that screamed \u201cI\u2019m missing a cable\u201d. But a ground is a ground, right? So I found an easily accessed bolt holding a metal tabby thing that is not in use to the engine block, loosened that and used the bolt to attach the battery cable end.<\/p>\n Again it fired right up. Transmission shifts into all gears. Everything that worked before is working now. So I guess I\u2019ll be going to work tomorrow after all.<\/p>\n But, when I get a chance, I\u2019m going to stop by the mechanic and see where that cable is supposed to be attached and if my patch-up is kosher.<\/p>\n All I can think of is that a bolt has been slowly working its way out and it fell out completely this evening. But I found no bolt in the driveway. And how could a cable end just sitting on a mostly loose bolt pass enough power to run the starter motor?<\/p>\n Weird, just weird!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My truck died this evening. It’s been running fine. At least it has since the last time I had it towed in and repaired. That’s been a few weeks. I moved it so I could mow the driveway (yes, I mow my driveway) and when I went to move it back it started up, started … Continue reading “Weirdness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-14480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-adventures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20693,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14480\/revisions\/20693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}