# battery goes dead



## 67goat56 (Mar 6, 2009)

I've had electrical problems the last 5 months. I've only driven 4 times in that period, plus starting and let idle in between drives. First 3 times car started, drove 7 miles to work. After work, car started ok, drove 7 miles home. Tried to restart, click,click,click. Jumped battery, car started. After the 1st drive, had battery checked, it was good just needed a charge and changed dash harness because it was a mess. In between 2nd and 3rd time I changed console harness and the harness from console harness to dash harness, drove 4th time a week later 1 mile no change. Since then I've changed the voltage regulator. Checked alternator, by starting car and disconnecting cable, engine quit. I took alternator to part store to have it checked, it passed. Out of ideas!


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## Lithium (Apr 23, 2009)

Im not sure if this will apply to your situation but my 68' started fine then a month later started clicking etc... draining the battery fast so I pulled the starter had it tested and it was good so I bought some shims and started playing with them and wow car turns over so fast now and cured my problem thus far if that was not my problem was gonna switch the ignition switch next. Shims only run about 3 bucks its worth a shot.


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## even steven (Feb 27, 2009)

i had a similar problem with my 70 a while back and the car would shut off if i disconnected the battery terminal so i thought that it was the alternator,but it was fine when load tested.turns out it was just that the belt wasn't tight enough.it has to be pretty tight.also,may sound dumb,but make sure the timing is not to far advanced,for that would cause a hard start after the motor's been running a while.trust me it happened to me and i was frustrated for a while until i fixed those couple small things.good luck.


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## 05GTO (Oct 6, 2004)

My rebuilt quartz clock will drain the battery on my 66 within a week, I have the clamp style battery cables and keep the positive cable disconnected. Remove your positive battery cable, turn everything off and see if the positive cable terminal sparks when touching the battery.


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## 67goat56 (Mar 6, 2009)

Thanks guys. never thought about loose belt! I kept putting off checking the starter, surrounded by the header. My horn was not connected to engine harness, had to rewire and connected it to the lighter hot wire.


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## Eric Animal (Oct 28, 2007)

Remove the neg battery wire from the battery terminal. Attach a 12 volt test light from the neg battery terminal to the neg battery cable. IF the light lights AT ALL even dimly, then you are drawing power somewhere. The brighter the light, the bigger the draw......start disconnecting, and re-connecting suspect accessories.. Stereo systems and such are prime suspects, as they often require juice for memory. ALSO, check the Neg battery cable where it attaches to the engine,,,this connection sometimes rusts, burns, etc. and will cause a problem. Start with the easy stuff. Once I had a 66 Goat with a battery problem, and it turned out that the brake light switch was sticking. Sometimes the brake lights would stay on all day and kill the battery.........Eric:cheers


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## ppurfield001 (Jan 21, 2008)

67goat56 said:


> Thanks guys. never thought about loose belt! I kept putting off checking the starter, surrounded by the header. My horn was not connected to engine harness, had to rewire and connected it to the lighter hot wire.



You can purchase from OPGI a mini-starter that takes up much less room so that headers can be more easily accomodated. Also, it cranks the engine better. Just a thought if your starter is dead. I did it and I like the mini-starter. Good luck.


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## 67goat56 (Mar 6, 2009)

hey guys--put on new voltage regulator and adjusted the alt. belt. belt moves about an inch when i push down. started the car, no red light. a couple of minutes later the new voltage regulator started smoking and making a strange sound, roaring? moaning? best i can describe.the red light came back on. checked wiring harness, only 1 way to plug in. i put my old regulator
back on, no problems. must have been the alt. belt from the beginning. anybody else have described problems with new regulator?
thanks for everybodys help! kevin


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