1992 Nissan 240SX Starting problem

[Mr.Spag240SX]

As some of you may know, i bought this car about a month ago. The guy i bought it from said it may need a new alternator soon.sure enough, a week later, its died. i bought a new battery, two days later, died again.replaced alternator about two weeks ago, also got new battery.

last week, it died again!i dunno what the problem is.a friend said it may be live wires, so i got a mechanic to come to my house and check it out. he said the wiring under the dash was a mess, and that he cut 4 live wires that lead to nowhere.

after he did what he did, it ran fine until two days ago, when it died again.i just got the battery recharged, and it starts great...

i dunno what the heck to do. i was thinking about taking it to get rewired...but i dunno how much that would cost me, and at the moment, i only have a couple hundred to spend.

so for the moment, im just gonna unhook, and rehook the battery when i need to drive.
Modified by Mr.Spag240SX at 10:43 PM 4/10/2007

[574-240sx]

Only way to fix it would be getting a FSM tracing all the wires and fixing everything. Make sure you have a voltmeter. If you have the time and extra cash go pull an entire body harness out of a car. I can tell you that it is very time consuming.

[Mr.Spag240SX]

damn. youre not the only one who has told me that.

btw, whats an FSM. pardon the ignorance.

so thats my prob...something is wired up wrong?

[Ramius83]

Well, it sounds like you have a parasitic drain. A parasitic drain is a drain on the battery when the ignition is turned off. An acceptable parasitic drain on any car is 0-30ish milliamps. Anything more is of a concern. You need to go about finding the history of this car, as to what has been done in the past. Has an aftermarket alarm been installed, radio, lights, etc? It may be one of these systems pulling the drain on the battery, or the remnants of one of these systems.

You need to grab yourself a good multi-meter or amp meter. Unhook the positive cable to the battery. Place one of the meter leads on the positive battery post and the other on the positive battery cable that you unhooked. With the doors closed, ignition off, etc, see what the meter is reading. If you have more than 30 millamps of draw, you have a parasitic drain.

Now, to go about finding one is difficult. If you have determined you have a drain, start pulling the fuses located in the cabin compartment one by one, and I repeat, one-by-one. And do the same for the fuses in the engine bay. If you pull a fuse and the parasitic drain number on the meter shoots down to 10ish milliamps or so, then that system related to that fuse is where you need to start looking........Good luck.

[Mr.Spag240SX]

Well, it sounds like you have a parasitic drain. A parasitic drain is a drain on the battery when the ignition is turned off. An acceptable parasitic drain on any car is 0-30ish milliamps. Anything more is of a concern. You need to go about finding the history of this car, as to what has been done in the past. Has an aftermarket alarm been installed, radio, lights, etc? It may be one of these systems pulling the drain on the battery, or the remnants of one of these systems.

You need to grab yourself a good multi-meter or amp meter. Unhook the positive cable to the battery. Place one of the meter leads on the positive battery post and the other on the positive battery cable that you unhooked. With the doors closed, ignition off, etc, see what the meter is reading. If you have more than 30 millamps of draw, you have a parasitic drain.

Now, to go about finding one is difficult. If you have determined you have a drain, start pulling the fuses located in the cabin compartment one by one, and I repeat, one-by-one. And do the same for the fuses in the engine bay. If you pull a fuse and the parasitic drain number on the meter shoots down to 10ish milliamps or so, then that system related to that fuse is where you need to start looking........Good luck.

wow, thanks...i will try this out later.will post what i find!