1990 DL 245

Our wagon suffered a no run situation as my wife drove to work the other morning. I get the call informing me she is dead in the middle of the road and the will not start. Good thing it is very early and at that hour here is little traffic where she is. I get there and the car is on the side of the road, some good Samaritan pushed her to the curb. I get there and with the key in ignition in KP2 I observed the following: NO dome light, NO door chime, NO headlights, NO brake lights, NO emergency flashers, nothing electrical functioned. I connected jumper cables and heard the door chime and saw the dome light illuminate the cabin. The car fired right up, I followed her to work only about a block away.

In her parking lot I checked the battery voltage key off 12.76 VDC. With the car running: AC on, fan on high, HI beams on, and dome light on 13.74 VDC across the battery terminals.

Battery Hx: New Energizer purchased this July. The battery was brought home, placed on the charger and removed when the battery charger ammeter showed no current being drawn, then placed into service.

The car is driven principally to her work, a distance of 4 miles or so and occasionally for errands the weekly average is less than 100 miles a week.

What I have done: Removed and cleaned the battery cables and posts, I observed a small amount of oxide had formed between the negative post and negative battery cable.

Renewed the battery to block ground connection. It was clean, but not quite as tight as I would have thought.

Removed the junction block cleaned all posts. Renewed the plus side connection at the fuse block, which got a cleaning along with the individual fuses, which are the brass appearing type. not of the lead contact type.

The car has been driven everyday without so much as a hiccup since the occurrence five days ago.

I am leaning towards the negative battery side that had the small amount of oxide between the post and cable as the culprit, perhaps the last time I had it off, I was less than diligent in tightening the connection.

At this point any input is as always, appreciated.

Fred