Well, I ruined as friend's battery...seems as if they don't like being ran in a car with an apparently non-charging alternator. Which is due to the fact my cluster isn't in yet. D'oh.
The the Caprice quit on us Saturday night...we were going out to eat, me, the wife, and kids. Thankfully my buddy was here at my place with his truck and trailer, so he was most kind and came and fetched us home again from our abruptly aborted supper jaunt.
I JUST put a new water pump and distributor in the thing...now it barely idles and dies if any kind of throttle is applied. Makes a popping sound, like spark is arcing, indeed, there's a bright blue spark coming from the coil. I suppose the thing has went bad from sitting for almost 2 years.
Suck to be completely without a vehicle. Guess I'll pop my cluster into the Tbird tomorrow and go pick up a coil and wires for the Caprice and see if it'll run again.
Is the battery old? Shouldn't be totally shot as long you get it on a slow (1.5 amp at the MOST) charger and let it sit a week or so. Everybody tries to jump-start and then drive around for a half-hour...that will get the interface charge at the terminals up, but once that energy propogates into the rest of the solution, it's lost at the terminals and you'll "see" a still-dead battery ;). I also wouldn't use a 6+ amp charger for that long, water might start boiling out. Or anyway, I would keep an eye on the thing and make sure the charger is smart enough that after a day or so it begins bringing down the charge rate.
Definitely not fun being without transportation. Pretty debilitating feeling, been there once or twice, *almost* been there several times :giggle:
Yeah my explorer battery died on me in October and wouldn't last after a jump, I put it on a 2 amp charge for 3 days and it's been fine since.. I thought the winter would knock it out for sure but its still going