Is my car prematurely dead without a good excuse?

I've parked my backup wagon from time to time for as much as two weeks. Always unhooked the battery so the clock wouldn't run it down. Never had trouble restarting it again.

This time it was 18 days. Hmmmmmm. Battery is stone cold dead. Won't even run the clock or turn over the heater fan. Not a glimmer on the lights.

buuuuut...If I bridge the battery terminals with a wrench I get a good spark.

Is it possible for a battery to have what looks like juice but still not even be able to drive minor accessories? It's less than a year old.

I checked both terminals and the body ground at the negative side. All ok.

If the battery had a dead cell would it show a good spark but maybe 10 volts wouldn't power up anything?

Thanks for any help you can give.

Doug Harvey

Take the battery to Auto-zone, Advance, or somewhere similar, and they will do a resistence test for your battery. It is possible you have an internal short in the battery which is causing the issue.

That would be the simple thing to fix! If you are not so lucky as to have a defective battery, then you probably have a break in a wire somewhere on the car. A bad ground likely would not cause the symptoms you describe, i.e. killing evrything electrical! Be absolutely sure your main cables are not broken or severely corroded. Otherwise, good luck . . .

Sounds like a bad connection at the battery.

Clean the terminals, lube with petroleum jelly (eg. vaseline), switch headlights on, put cables on terminals, rotate until lights come on, and clamp.
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1980 245 Canadian B21A with SU carb and M46 trans

The only wire I can think of that causes a dead car is the pigtail from the positive terminal that goes to the side of the engine compartment. I burnt through a butt splice recently and the car went completely dead. Take the cover off the terminal box on the side and make sure the spade conection is good. YOu may have moved it replacing the positive lead.
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Simon 80 240 307k 18 years. 'White Lightning'

Check the voltage across the batt terminals to see if you have a dead cell. But it really sounds like you have a bad connection. Disconnect the terminals at the batt and check for continuity.

Check fuses first and foremost.

Using an ohm meter, check the resistance between the negative terminal on the battery and the engine block. You should get some number. If you get a infinate resistance, then your battery isn't grounding properly.

There must be a bad connection near the battery somewhere. I have a '76 sitting in my back yard that hasn't been started in almost a year and a half and the battery is still strong enough to light up the headlights, so if your battery was dead you would probably still be able to see something.

Good luck.
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If you listen to the radio in Portland, OR, you may know me as 'Portland's Favorite Soul Brother!'