Hello, I am a disabled senior in Napa, CA and my daily driver vehicle will not start. Any assistance or help would be appreciated.

1994 XJS 2+2 6 Cylinder, auto with 210,000 miles... Had AAA come out and look at the car, checked battery and alternator and those checked out. Vehicle turned on when jumped, but was dead the next day. It appears to be an electrical drain or a relay problem? Although I am not sure.

Symptoms.

-Clicking Sound near lower passenger door or engine. Hard to tell.
-when I open the rear hood the clicking sound stops and starts again upon closing the hood. odd.


Symptoms that may or may not be related.

-For past few weeks, when car ran, windshield wipers would not shut off - need to try different settings to shut them off. stay off for 20 min then restart.
-2 weeks ago the car alarm went off at 3am for no reason.

Help. Thank you.

 

How old is the battery? That is the first place to start. It sounds like it won't hold a full charge.

 

Ronald. The battery was purchased from AAA last March. So should be good and AAA tech tested battery and he said it was good. Something is draining the battery in the vehicle.

 

any ideas? Thank you community.

 

You may well have something creating a parasitic drain on the battery.

First thing is to measure the quiescent current at the battery. Remove the negative cable from the battery and connect a multimeter set to amps between the negative post and the disconnected cable.

Ideally you should see less than 40 milliamperes. If you have a lot more, then go to each fuse box in turn and remove the fuses one at a time while viewing the meter. When the meter reading drops you will have found the circuit that is causing the problem. Just check the manual and see what components are using that fuse and trace those circuits.

 

A favourite culprit is the boot (trunk) lights; they stay on when the lid is closed but you can't see that they are still on; they will take a while to run a decent battery down though.

 

Yep, that can happen. Easy to check though. I put my camera phone in movie record mode and stick it in the boot and close the lid. Open the lid and and replay the movie. Simples

 

Sorry everyone, but why complicate everything when you can just cycle the switch to turn the lights off and see if it actually works with the boot lid open lol?

 

Because the law of sod will apply! Shutting the lid may not press the switch enough to break the contacts.

 

ahh, i guess that makes sense. If you don't have access to something like that and haven't changed to LEDs like me you could also just check to see if the lamp covers are hot immediately after opening the boot lid. If they are, then the lights were not going off

 

Another option of course is to stick your best pal in the boot and shut it.
Then have a cup of coffee whilst searching the threads on how to unlock a jammed boot lid.