Hi all,

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but haven't been online much lately. Anyhow, I recently rehabbed an '88 wagon. Did all the usual 0-mile things, refreshed all of the usual electrical trouble areas (plus some--I put in a whole new interior, so lots of grounds and connectors that normally don't get cleaned got cleaned). But no matter what I did there were occasional bouts of very poor running, sudden loss of power (like an electrical version of a plugged cat), random hesitations and burps, occasionally variable idle speed, random stalling but no trouble restarting. All sorts of weird things under totally variable conditions. Nothing that was at all replicable, nothing consistent, and it never once did anything weird in the driveway. It never stranded me, but it certainly wasn't our road car and my wife avoided driving it like the plague.

I finally replaced the negative battery cable and all has been swell since. I had cleaned the ends of it (twice of course!), but it was too far gone on the inside. It's been 6+ months and EVERY weird little problem has totally vanished. Now she runs like a 240 should, and battery cables are on my 0-mile or "once every 20 years" list. Hope it helps someone with all sorts of strange problems in the future.

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'68 220; '88 & '92 245s; '98 XC 70