Next Years Power Tour Car

[kwhizz]

LOL.......The story and education continues......As we go back to the low charging rate issue......after the battery change the rate came up to the 13.5 - 13.7 zone.....so I assumed that that was the issue and everything was as good as it was gonna get...........So....As I am driving the car home a couple of days ago.......my biggest fear came true......As I was driving and slowing down, I noticed that the Radio was off and all the dash gauges were off........I also realized the engine wasn't running when I stepped on the brakes and there wasn't any vacuum for the Brakes to work.......Luckily there wasn't any traffic and I had plenty of room to stop.......Pretty Scary........so......The car just shut off.....WTF!!
I pulled over and turned the key and nothing........Humm!!........waited a minute and hit the key again and it started right up and drove normal the rest of the way home.......But.....I now have lost my faith in the car......so I get home and put the car in the garage......started it many times and everything was normal......So.....as I start thinking about it it seemed as if I had turned the key off as all power was lost......Humm!!!.......So.....What could cause that to happen......The only two things that I could think would be if the plug that feeds power to the fuse panel at the firewall lost contact or if the wires were loose or something happened at the Ignition Switch (I had an aftermarket switch in the car to eliminate some issues with the computer set-up).....So....I stopped and bought another switch at Frame-Up on the way home just in case........
I take the plugs off the fuse panel and clean everything with a wire brush and Electrical Contact cleaner.....I also spread out the connector blades just to make sure there would be contact.....Put everything back together and the car started fine.......so.....I decided to remove the Ignition switch just to make sure everything was tight.......pulled the switch out and had it hanging below the Dash and everything seemed tight......I started the car again and no issues.......so....I went to install the switch back in the dash and just about burnt my fingers on the Battery feed wires on the switch.......Hummm!!!Everything seemed tight but........being a Voltmeter guy I realized that Heat = Resistance.....So....As I looked closer I noticed that I didn't have any star washers on that terminal......So....I decided to put the new switch in and added star washers between all the terminals and tightened everything up again.....started the car up and looked at the Voltmeter and it was up in the 14.5 volt range and the wire was not Hot anymore......Bingo......now I really found out where the missing Volts were going........Lesson "Learned" again.........After 5600 miles the heat took it's toll on the switch.....and the Voltmeter was telling me all along there was a issue somewhere........Funny thing is that John at Speartech (Who did the computer harnesses) told me that there was a resistance issue somewhere in the system..........The Education continues......LOL