Cascade Crew

[Quasi-Traction]

Ok, got my freshly rebuilt carb back on the camaro, hooked everything up and thought I was good to go......had lights, signals everything.......turned the key and everything goes dead....AGAIN..... turned the key to the "off" position. Turned back to "acc"......nothing. no lights, no signals, no anything. When I put the thing on the charger again, it had power, but made a slow clicking which didn't sound like it was coming from the alternator...sounded more like it was coming from around the exhaust manifold (could it be the solenoid?) it clicks slowly on the 2 volt 40amp charge.... and it does it more rapidly when its on the 2 volt 200amp "jump start" charge. If it is a solenoid why would everything go dead after that? maybe grounding itself all the way out? Any help/advice offered would be appreciated. I Really don't want to take this to a mechanic, but if I can't get thing thing running before the end of this month I'm gonna have to cave and tow it there.

[chevymad]

This sounds like you have either a bad cable or connection. As soon as the amperage draw gets high enough the connection fails. I've had this happen at the shop many times. Usually its the battery post connection, make sure they're clean. They can get a hard carbon surface on them and do this kind of thing. If so scrape it down to the soft lead. Being this is a new motor make sure there is no paint under the ground connection either. A star toothed washer is nice under these too cause it will dig into both the cable and the engine making a good connection.

Couple of ways to test the cables themselves.. One is to do a voltage drop test with a volt meter. Attach the positive lead to the battery post of the cable you want to test and the negative lead of the tester to the other end of the cable. Have someone try to crank it. You should see no more then 0.5 volt. This is the voltage drop. If it shows 12v you've lost connection entirely replace the cable. Do the same with the negative cable, but here attach one lead to the post and one to a good ground on the engine. This way you test the connections as well.

Another probably more simple way is to take a pair of jumper cables and use them sort of as battery cables. To test the negative cable say just clamp one end of the jumper on the negative post and the other on the engine somewhere.. then try to start the car.

Think you'll find its something simple anyway.

[LB985IROC]

load tes ur battery and check your starter out as well and check your fuses

[Quasi-Traction]

I never did this until I took my alternator off and loaned to another crewbie (don't worry, I'm not pointing fingers...) I'm wondering why all of a sudden it would start doing this...I'll clean the terminals and take the battery to be load tested to see if that helps at all.

I'll keep you guys updated.

[Quasi-Traction]

cleaned both positive and Negative battery posts where they connect to the battery. Positive looked pretty good.....Negative didn't look so good. Ran some 150 grit over the surface of both the battery posts and cables where they connect to the battery. Reconnected both cables to the battery and tightned both cables against the battery real hard.....VOLA.....everything works as it did before the alt was removed.

Thanks Brandon.....I probalby would have bought a new solenoid if it were for the advice....really, thanks to all the crewbies who've posted on this...I feel like such a fool.....its always the simplest stuff that throws me off....

[Xophertony]

don't feel foolish. remember that i did the same thing and 3 or four crewbies mentioned getting caught with the same BS. the napa guys seemed to empathise too. they new what i was talking about

i am so psyched it all works.. well not all, but you know what i mean.