Electrical Gremlin

[EquipMgr]

Long time lurker, first time poster....
My son's 93 Explorer, 2dr, 2wd, has decided to go dead intermittently. No electrical what so ever. Completely dead. Jumping will cause the dash, gauges, chimes, etc to come on, but will not provide enough power to turn the engine over. Poking, pulling wires, banging on solenoid, etc does not SEEM to have any effect. Eventually, it will then start up normally, be fine for a few weeks, and then decide to go dead again. Volt meter seems to jump around excessively when power is required - even when brakes are applied causing brakelights to come on.
Any thoughts?
Thanks.

 

[Tbars4]

...my first thought would be bad pos and neg cables...my next thought would be after replacing both those cables, look for loose ground wires, cables, losse coil pack...

 

[bluesman2333]

Sounds to me like a bad alternator. When you try to jump it, do you attach the jumper cables to the battery positive and negative or to battery positive and some metal part? If the jumpers are going to the positive and metal, it could be the negative cable too. In any event, you need to give the battery cables a good hard look, have the battery and alternator tested and check all over for loose connections, including the starter.

 

[Dlee6204]

In my case it ended up being the positive terminal off the battery. Every once in a while I would go to crank it and everything would go dead. It sounds like a bad connection somewhere.

 

[v1rotv2]

Had pretty muich the same proble.

I cleaned the battery posts and cable ends but still had the problem. The problem turned out to be the positive cable had a split in it on the underside and had corroded all through the cable but was hiddened by the plastic covering the ends of the cable. Changed the entire cable problem went away.

 

[ricco750]

Change the cables. I had the exact same symptoms, disappeared after new cables.

 

[bluesman2333]

The reason I thought alternator is because the battery is dead but jumping it brings it to life. If the cables were so bad that you couldn't jump it, ie nothing was getting from the battery to the rest of the electrical system, then I would think cables. This wasn't the case with you?

 

[Susie]

I don't know if this will help, but we had a 89 Ranger which all of a sudden had absolutely know electric. Changed the key switch and it didn't help a thing. The problem ended up being in the Power Distribution Box under the hood. The large fuses looked clean, but they most have been oxided enough to break contact. Cleaned the 30 amp for the ignition and alternator and the thing start and acted normal.

 

[EquipMgr]

First, a big thanks for all the help!
Fortunately(?) it happened again yesterday which gave us a chance to attempt to jump the thing. Tried jumping to the positive battery terminal and vehicle body, but was unable to get a connection which leads me to the auto parts store to pick up a positive battery cable....
I will let you know!