Saturday I was wheeling in the local mountains and had an issue where my battery shifted and the positive terminal made contact with the edge of the tub.
When this happened the motor died and wouldn't turn over at first when I attempted to restart it. After opening the hood I noticed it had shifted and realized what happened. I moved the battery around by hand and immediately my under hood light came on, so I tried the key and she fired right up. I got the battery strapped down better, but I had this no crank situation occur a couple more times on the trail, but each time I was able to jiggle the battery a bit and all worked well again.
Once we finished the trail I was gassing up and I got another no crank situation. This time, the lights and radio worked but the starter wouldn't work. I'm guessing the damage shown above to my terminal connector was leaving an intermittent connection that was good enough for lights/radio but not enough juice to power the starter?
After doing more wire and battery jiggling, she finally fired up and I promptly left to head down the mountain because there was a wildfire in the area and roads in/out were starting to get shut down.
I immediately noticed that the Jeep was down on power, I could put my foot to the floor on a downhill grade and it was not accelerating just holding right at 45 miles per hour. I was getting nervous because of the fire so I just resolved to drive it as far down the mountain as I could get, and if she broke down on me, at least I'd be closer to services. After I'd say about 30 minutes the issue went away and normal power seemed to return, I got down the mountain and jumped on the freeway going 70 no problem.
Does anyone have ideas on how the battery terminal issue may have caused the problem with the motor being temporarily down on power? It almost seemed like the Jeep was in some sort of limp mode maybe, but no codes were thrown.
And yes, a proper battery hold down clamp along with a new battery terminal are on my shopping list.
When this happened the motor died and wouldn't turn over at first when I attempted to restart it. After opening the hood I noticed it had shifted and realized what happened. I moved the battery around by hand and immediately my under hood light came on, so I tried the key and she fired right up. I got the battery strapped down better, but I had this no crank situation occur a couple more times on the trail, but each time I was able to jiggle the battery a bit and all worked well again.
Once we finished the trail I was gassing up and I got another no crank situation. This time, the lights and radio worked but the starter wouldn't work. I'm guessing the damage shown above to my terminal connector was leaving an intermittent connection that was good enough for lights/radio but not enough juice to power the starter?
After doing more wire and battery jiggling, she finally fired up and I promptly left to head down the mountain because there was a wildfire in the area and roads in/out were starting to get shut down.
I immediately noticed that the Jeep was down on power, I could put my foot to the floor on a downhill grade and it was not accelerating just holding right at 45 miles per hour. I was getting nervous because of the fire so I just resolved to drive it as far down the mountain as I could get, and if she broke down on me, at least I'd be closer to services. After I'd say about 30 minutes the issue went away and normal power seemed to return, I got down the mountain and jumped on the freeway going 70 no problem.
Does anyone have ideas on how the battery terminal issue may have caused the problem with the motor being temporarily down on power? It almost seemed like the Jeep was in some sort of limp mode maybe, but no codes were thrown.
And yes, a proper battery hold down clamp along with a new battery terminal are on my shopping list.
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Some cables can correct your problem.
