lightningrodbob
Active Member
- Joined
- December 23, 2009
- Messages
- 64
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- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 98 Eddie Bauer V8
So let me preface this by saying I don't know a whole lot about cars. I just bought my explorer yesterday, about 15 miles outside of Sacramento, and then had to drive it all the way home to Boise.
The owners hadn't been driving the car for the past 6 months, so when they went to start it the battery was dead. Rather than jumping it, they just bought a new battery and had it put in there. So on the drive home, I had 3 strange issues which all lead me to believe something might be wrong with the battery hookup:
1) the biggest issue was that my headlights stopped working consistently about halfway home. They wouldn't respond to me turning the off/on dial on the dash. I would turn them off, and they would remain on. Then they would turn off a few minutes later. Then I would turn the switch to ON, and they would remain off. Until I drove over a bump or a pothole, and they would switch on. It was almost like something was loose and the lights would cut on or off when I went over a bump, or slammed my door. Long story short, I had to drive almost 300 miles with my brights on, which work perfectly for some reason. When I was out in the open highway I would switch my brights off to see if my headlights would start working again. Sometimes they would come on again for about 10 seconds and then switch off (kinda scary when your doing 85 through the nevada desert in the pitch black).
2) The car has an issue with the blend door, so I drove it all the way home with no heat (tried to fix it with my dad before i left, but couldn't manage to get it done, and had to drive home before it got too late.) So in order to keep the windows from fogging up, I bought a little 12volt heater to mount on the dash and blow hot air on the windshield. The strange thing is, after being plugged in to the cigarette lighter for more than 10 minutes, the cord would get so incredibly hot you almost couldn't touch it. The whole length of the cord was this way. After a couple hours of use the heater stopped working entirely. It made me think maybe it was recieving too much voltage from the battery which was why it started to get so hot, and then caused it to stop working eventually.
3) the factory built-in subwoofer in the back of the explorer sounded like it blew out, and the strange thing is the volume wasn't turned up that loud. I had it bumping pretty good, but nothing out of the ordinary, I've listened to my girlfriends stock system in her 95 jeep much louder with no ill effects. I thought maybe the amp was receiving too much juice from the battery and putting too much power into the sub which caused it to overwork.
These 3 issues all seemed to be linked, I'm really hoping they are because it would be a lot easier to fix 3 things at once with 1 common problem, than find 3 different fixes for 3 different issues.
The owners hadn't been driving the car for the past 6 months, so when they went to start it the battery was dead. Rather than jumping it, they just bought a new battery and had it put in there. So on the drive home, I had 3 strange issues which all lead me to believe something might be wrong with the battery hookup:
1) the biggest issue was that my headlights stopped working consistently about halfway home. They wouldn't respond to me turning the off/on dial on the dash. I would turn them off, and they would remain on. Then they would turn off a few minutes later. Then I would turn the switch to ON, and they would remain off. Until I drove over a bump or a pothole, and they would switch on. It was almost like something was loose and the lights would cut on or off when I went over a bump, or slammed my door. Long story short, I had to drive almost 300 miles with my brights on, which work perfectly for some reason. When I was out in the open highway I would switch my brights off to see if my headlights would start working again. Sometimes they would come on again for about 10 seconds and then switch off (kinda scary when your doing 85 through the nevada desert in the pitch black).
2) The car has an issue with the blend door, so I drove it all the way home with no heat (tried to fix it with my dad before i left, but couldn't manage to get it done, and had to drive home before it got too late.) So in order to keep the windows from fogging up, I bought a little 12volt heater to mount on the dash and blow hot air on the windshield. The strange thing is, after being plugged in to the cigarette lighter for more than 10 minutes, the cord would get so incredibly hot you almost couldn't touch it. The whole length of the cord was this way. After a couple hours of use the heater stopped working entirely. It made me think maybe it was recieving too much voltage from the battery which was why it started to get so hot, and then caused it to stop working eventually.
3) the factory built-in subwoofer in the back of the explorer sounded like it blew out, and the strange thing is the volume wasn't turned up that loud. I had it bumping pretty good, but nothing out of the ordinary, I've listened to my girlfriends stock system in her 95 jeep much louder with no ill effects. I thought maybe the amp was receiving too much juice from the battery and putting too much power into the sub which caused it to overwork.
These 3 issues all seemed to be linked, I'm really hoping they are because it would be a lot easier to fix 3 things at once with 1 common problem, than find 3 different fixes for 3 different issues.
