drfiero308
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Hi
Newbie here.
Just hoping someone can advise.
I bought a nice fiero 308GTB replica last week. It had a dead battery but jump started fine. The battery clearly was dead as a new one was required and simply connected the new battery in parallel to allow me to drive the car home (which it did fine for about 250 miles). Cabin volt gauge indicated between 12 and 14 volts - needle periodically flickered between these two displayed values.
I changed the battery over the weekend - which is a bit of a fiddle given the poor access. Car fired up fine but volt gauge showed 10v or so and, when driving around clearly was falling gradually. A multimeter across the battery terminals indicated no charge being received from the alternator.
In a fiero, the positive battery point has a feed to a nearby connector block, from which the main red cable links to the alternator. There is a fusible link in this cabling.
I poked around this connector block area and noted that a PO had cut the fusible wiring in the alternator cabling and then crudely wound the wires together and covered it in tape for some reason. I thought my poking around might have disturbed this connection and that this would explain why i had no charge to the battery. I reconnected this with a short 27amp length of cable and then reattached the battery.
Immediately, there were lots of sparks and the newly installed spliced cable simply melted.
Clearly I had a short that was earthing the battery directly through this cabling.
Reading around the topic as I can tell, then I could have failed diodes in the alternator allowing a direct connection to earth?
But just a bit confused as to why this happened now when before the battery install, even with the dodgy connection i found, the car was charging and running reasonably OK? Just a coincidence of problems?
Anyone have any experience of this problem or similar please?
Thanks
ian
Newbie here.
Just hoping someone can advise.
I bought a nice fiero 308GTB replica last week. It had a dead battery but jump started fine. The battery clearly was dead as a new one was required and simply connected the new battery in parallel to allow me to drive the car home (which it did fine for about 250 miles). Cabin volt gauge indicated between 12 and 14 volts - needle periodically flickered between these two displayed values.
I changed the battery over the weekend - which is a bit of a fiddle given the poor access. Car fired up fine but volt gauge showed 10v or so and, when driving around clearly was falling gradually. A multimeter across the battery terminals indicated no charge being received from the alternator.
In a fiero, the positive battery point has a feed to a nearby connector block, from which the main red cable links to the alternator. There is a fusible link in this cabling.
I poked around this connector block area and noted that a PO had cut the fusible wiring in the alternator cabling and then crudely wound the wires together and covered it in tape for some reason. I thought my poking around might have disturbed this connection and that this would explain why i had no charge to the battery. I reconnected this with a short 27amp length of cable and then reattached the battery.
Immediately, there were lots of sparks and the newly installed spliced cable simply melted.
Clearly I had a short that was earthing the battery directly through this cabling.
Reading around the topic as I can tell, then I could have failed diodes in the alternator allowing a direct connection to earth?
But just a bit confused as to why this happened now when before the battery install, even with the dodgy connection i found, the car was charging and running reasonably OK? Just a coincidence of problems?
Anyone have any experience of this problem or similar please?
Thanks
ian
