There's always something going wrong or about to go wrong with this car. It is the most lovely car I've ever owned but it is also the biggest hunk of garbage I've ever owned too.
I've been lucky diagnosing the problems that I've had with our 1977 Corvette. While the work to repair what was wrong has been at times challenging, diagnosing what was wrong in the first place has been very straight forward. Except, however, when "Little Red Corvette" started to have what I melodramatically described as "intermittent catastrophic electrical problems".
It all began last summer after I pulled out the dead passenger side power window motor so we could open and close the window manually. After I put the car back together there was no power in the cabin. I checked everything I could and I found nothing wrong and then, seemingly like magic, there was power in the cabin and the car started. It continued to do so with the problem not coming back at all for the rest of last summer.
Everything I read on replacing this power steering pump had me believing it was going to be water torture to get the old one out and the new one in. I found it to be a very straight forward dare I say simple process. What came next had me ready to push the car into Lake Erie.
I quickly forgot about this problem, that is, until this past February after I went to start the car after I replaced the power steering pump. Just like last summer there was no power in the cabin and the car wouldn't start. Great. Another test of everything found nothing wrong and then, just like before, the power returned to the cabin and the car turned over. A couple of times. It went back to being dead and this time "dead car syndrome" was here to stay. What made it very confusing for me was that sometimes there would be power in the cabin but the starter would just go "chunk" or "click-click-click". After the "chunk" and "clicking" there would be no power in the cabin again. Sometimes for days. Then power would inexplicably come back on but the car wouldn't start - the whole "click-click-click" and the going dead again three act play playing itself out over and over.
Certain that there was something horribly wrong and sick to my stomach at the notion of having the car towed to a shop, I contacted the "technical director" at one of the parts distributors I use and attempted to describe what was going on. He told me that it was probably a bad starter since sometimes the car would have power. Seemed odd seeing that I replaced the starter when I first got the car in 2012 but I replaced it anyway. After I went through that pain in the neck the car had power in the cabin and the car did crank! at first. It then went back to being as dead as before. I spoke to the tech again and this time he recommended I check the grounds. In doing so I found the negative battery cable to be very corroded so I replaced it and I also removed, inspected and cleaned the ground strap from the engine block to the motor mount on the right side of the car. All this, by the way, taking hours to complete. Amazing how time flies when you're frantically trouble shooting. After all that the damn car still had no power! At this point I'm losing my patience and I'm thinking of pushing lovely plastic lump into Lake Erie.
My Little Red Corvette was in this position for most of the winter as I tried over and over and over to get it to start.
Once again describing the problems that I was having with the car in great detail but this time on http://www.corvetteforum.com, several people insisted the problem was a bad ground. Bad ground? Really? Hadn't I fixed that problem already? Someone suggested I attach a jumper cable to the negative post on the battery and the other end to the body so as to at least I could establish some sort of solid ground from the battery. And what do you know, it worked! But the starter cranked very slowly and then went "click-click-click". However, the car didn't go dead after wards. I was somewhat elated since I felt I was making progress even if I had no idea exactly what that progress was.
This picture was taken on the service road on west bound I-90 the weekend I finished the power steering project. Leery of the power issue, I left the car running when I took this picture.
This picture was taken before most of the recent disasters unearthed themselves. Failed rear brakes, passenger side power window motor stopped working, power steering system failed, and of course the lingering "dead cabin" issues.
Convinced that it was a bad ground after all, I put the battery back in and secured the grounding end of the negative battery cable to a better place than I had it previously. I tightened everything down again as best as I could and "Little Red Corvette" turned right over. And, blissfully, continues to do so. I've surmised that the original problem was the corroded negative battery cable but I compounded problems by not installing the new one correctly.
Little Red Corvette is running again. At least for now.
Ironically, what at first seemed to be an almost insurmountably difficult problem for me to diagnose turned out to be something very simple. I have to thank the members of http://www.corvetteforum.com for their help and I recommend that site wholeheartedly for anyone with an Old Corvette like my '77. Hopefully, I will have a driving season with as few breaks in it as possible because of breakdowns. I'm waiting to exhale.
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