Electrical Problem 89 XJ, goes dead

[deisenba]

Well, I got home last night and it fired right up. Voltage was up around 13.5V or so. I turned the lights on, and the defroster and the 2 sets of lights I have up front and it dropped down to around 11V. I drove it for a couple minutes and it was getting close to 10V. I checked the cables and the positive lead had a crack in it where it attached to the battery. As soon as I threw a pliers on it to see how strong it was, it nearly cracked off. So job #1will be replacing both cables. I'll also pull the alternator and have it checked out.

On the solar trickle chargers, do you hook them directly to the battery, or did you change the wiring to the cigarette outlet to be live all the time?

 

[5-90]

Well, I got home last night and it fired right up. Voltage was up around 13.5V or so. I turned the lights on, and the defroster and the 2 sets of lights I have up front and it dropped down to around 11V. I drove it for a couple minutes and it was getting close to 10V. I checked the cables and the positive lead had a crack in it where it attached to the battery. As soon as I threw a pliers on it to see how strong it was, it nearly cracked off. So job #1will be replacing both cables. I'll also pull the alternator and have it checked out.

On the solar trickle chargers, do you hook them directly to the battery, or did you change the wiring to the cigarette outlet to be live all the time?

I like to have the lighter outlet available for other uses, so I'd probably wire it to the battery (through a diode, if there's not one inbuilt. I think PV cells are polarised anyhow, but why take chances?

Here's an excellent writeup on battery cables (but my opinion is rather biased...) http://www.ericsxj.com/winch/winchbumper5.htm

 

[deisenba]

So just a follow up. I replaced both cables. The voltage immediately came back up to 13V. I took it to check the battery and alternator. I found out that the alternator is good, but the battery shows that it has a problem. The guy was not specific, but it is probably a bad cell.