Fried Electrical System! ....Help!

[Mike]

I went for an afternoon ride on easy trails near the house yesterday after work. On the way back to pavement, the radio would blink off and then back on. It did this three times and then the instrument panel went dead briefly. I bumped the panel with my hand and the panel came back to life.

About 100 yards later the gas needle started vibrating all over the place and immediately afterward the engine went dead. No electrical power in the Jeep at all. I was still rolling downhill so I popped the clutch to try to get a restart. The engine turned and acted like it wanted to run, but would not come back to life.

When I stopped, there was no electrical life in the Jeep at all. The battery was stone dead. I checked all the fuses and found all of them to be in good shape.

I called to get a ride and went to get a new battery. When we pulled the old battery out, it was very hot to the touch. Instead of putting the new battery in, we connected it with jumper cables so that we could disconnect in a hurry if needed. Good thing too. The engine tried to turn over, but immediately went dead electrically.

We pulled the cables off quickly, but even so, the cables were hot to the touch in just a few seconds of use.

I don't know much about the electrial system of a Jeep. I'm guessing that I have a seriously bad short to a ground somewhere.

Any advice???

[RAT]

Any advice???

Mike,
Did you drive through water? There are a lot of things that will do that, so here are some things to check:

• The battery connection at the starter. Something may have got jammed in there and is shorting the battery to ground.
• IF you went through deep enough water, the starter might have leaked water into it and shorted. Only seen this once, but...
• There may be a short behind the dash. The vibration from running on rough roads might have casued a wire bundle to rub on a support bracket or something
• Check your batt connections of the wench. If you flexed big or hit something you might have gotten the cables ( I know of what I speak here
• Check all the wiring harnesses that run under the Jeep. An errant rock might have clipped one and caused a short.

That's enough to start with. I'm sure others will chime in soon with oter ideas. If you need help call me.
Kurt

[Mike]

That's enough to start with. I'm sure others will chime in soon with oter ideas. If you need help call me.
Kurt

Thanks Kurt. I'm about to crawl under the Jeep now to start checking the suggested list. I'm surprised that you are on-line. I thought that you would still be at FITD.....

[RAT]

Thanks Kurt. I'm about to crawl under the Jeep now to start checking the suggested list. I'm surprised that you are on-line. I thought that you would still be at FITD.....

Dude,
That was a freaking awsome event! I left at 10am this morning, was going to do another run but had a small problem with the 4x shifter. No biggie, but didn't want to temp fate any more. There should be some cool pics up here soon. It was a contest to see who could get more cattywhompus; Stuart or me. I think his jeep looks better as a poser, but I might have him beat on the flop. We'll just have to wait for the pics.
OK, let me know what happens with Mr. Green. I can't have him being sick like that. Not good...

Kurt

[freewaydan]

Check your ground wires from the engine to the jeep, did a fuse come loose in the pannel? God knows i have had my share of electrical problems... all else fails get it to my shop and we can check it out...

[Russ Chung]

Mike,

I can think of only two things that might produce the symptoms that you are experiencing:
1. One of the two positive battery cables (one goes to the PDC and the other to the starter) is frayed and shorting to ground. These two cables are not protected by fuses; everything else is protected by fuses or a fusible link.
2. There is an internal short in the old battery.

When you hooked up the new battery with jumper cables, did you first disconnect the old battery? If not, disconnect the ground cable at the old battery, connect the positive jumper cable from the new battery to the positive battery cables (you can leave them on the old battery), and connect the negative jumper cable from the new battery to the chassis ground. This will eliminate the old battery from the circuit. If the jumper cables don't get hot, then I would suspect the old battery. If the jumper cables get hot, then I would suspect one of the two positive battery cables.

[Mike]

Mr. Green is Healthy again!

Thanks for all the advice. I found the problem pretty quickly. The postive lead for the winch got sliced by a flange on my new three core radiator that I put in a few weeks ago. The burn-through was in a place that was hard to see until I started carefully following the leads.

I replaced the lead, but the battery was toast. Since I broke something, the rule I use is to upgrade! So Mr. Green is cranking off of a new yellow top Optima deep-cycle battery!

Thanks again to everyone for the help.

[RAT]

Yeahhhhhhh! Mr. Green rides again! Yeeee Hawwwwwww. Good job Mike.

[steelman]

[*]Check your batt connections of the wench. If you flexed big or hit something you might have gotten the cables ( I know of what I speak here

That WAS a shocking experience, wasn't it?!

[Black & Tan TJ]

Thanks again to everyone for the help.

This is what it's all about.

Glad to see it was a quick fix and not a long drawn out bummer that wouldn't go away.

You guys ROCK!

Cheers, B&T TJ

[Schmo]

Nice job Mike! Glad to hear Mr. Green is back up and running.

[Mtbikbob]

We were all sweatin for Mr. Green.
Next time you think you may have an electrical short, a quick way to check without incident is to connect a ohm meter from between the negative cable and the positive one. ( battery disconnected of course). With everything turned off there should be no read in the meter.
Just a note.
See you out there....

[Mike]

Thanks everybody. Ya just gotta love the MJR folks! The saddest part of my adventure is that if I had checked the lines more carefully, I could have saved the cost of a tow. Oh well, lessons learned...

Thanks again everyone!