I drove the car to the IPD garage sale yesterday, and left to go to the local pick n pull to buy new (to me) carpet. Drove back to IPD garage sale, and parked.

Car ran fine, showed no real symptoms.

Car sat for about 5 hours and when I went back to the car to leave it started and then stalled and then wouldn't start.

I noticed that the transmission arrow idiot light was flashing. So I googled it, and it sounded like it was a transmission issue (i.e., limp mode) but I don't know why that wouldn't let it start.

I thought it was the lawn mower effect, but in the times I've had this issue before, it A: never showed any idiot light warnings and B: started up eventually within 10-15 minutes.

I looked up other suggestions (car no start, transmission idiot light, etc) and one said that I could try running the shifter through the gears like 15-20 times. It didn't do anything.

I checked the transmission fluid, just to see if it was low. It wasn't. Didn't look strange at all either.

I checked the codes for the transmission (because that was the idiot light) and it through the codes for "Throttle position (TPS) sensor signal too low and Kickdown switch faulty or short to ground".

One thing we noticed, there was a massive amount of corrosion on one of the battery lines. It appears that there are 2 big lines coming off the +battery terminal. On one of the two cables, there was a smaller wire with it. That wire was absolutely toast.

Does anyone know what that second wire does? I don't know the size, but it's probably about 12 gauge (?).

Thankfully a friend of mine works for IPD and he sent over some guys to look. They couldn't figure it out (w/out proper tools, etc).

I had it towed to a local AAA shop, and they'll run a diagnosis on it Monday (hopefully in the process of fixing/figuring out the issue, they'll also diagnose the vacuum leak issue Ive had and that gull-darned squeal).

The tow truck driver thought it wasn't getting any spark (at least I think thats what he said, I was too stressed and hungry to fully comprehend what he was saying at the time).


Could that secondary line on the battery cable maybe feed the coil power?

btw, since I know someone will ask this, I just filled the tank with gas this week. It was getting gas too, they checked that.

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1985 245. 246K Gone..but not forgotten.