I'd post this in the tech forums, but I'm a new member here, and I've found myself stumped.

I'll try and be as concise as possible.

About a week ago I took the car to the airport to pickup my girlfriend, car had been running great for a while, but on my drive over it threw a CEL. I keep all my tools in the trunk, so when I go to the airport I parked and shut the car off (mistake), grabbed my OBD scanner, and got a P0301 code (misfire from what I can gather). Now the car ran great the whole way, didn't notice any lack of power, stalling, or stuttering.

I went to put her stuff in the trunk and went to go turn on the car, but it wouldn't turn over. You could hear the rotor spinning, and it sounded a little rougher than usual when trying to get it to turn over, almost like there was a scraping sound, but I couldn't get it to start. Had a friend come and help me jump it and bump start it, and again, it was running perfectly.

Now to make things more odd, when we were jumping it due to the weak battery from trying to start it too many times. My gauges and radio unit were flickering a lot, when I finally got it going, it was all functioning perfectly.

After getting home and checking it again I now have the following issues:

• Door lights don't work
• Cabin roof lights don't work
• Radio/radio display does not work or turn on
• OBD port is not powering OBD scanner
• Car won't start/turn over

Now I'm stumped. I checked the battery, and it is fully charged. From the engine bay, you can hear a clicking sound when turning the key from acc to on, and again when you try and turn it on.

I'm wondering if the culprit is the main 120a fuse, because I noticed the plastic near the wire to the fuse box looks a little scorched (wasn't before to my recollection), but the fuse itself looks fine.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

are the battery terminals clean and tight? check all your fuses. is there a chance you shorted something while jumping it? could you or your friend reversed the jumper cables? did you get a flashing check engine light at any point while driving?

 

New terminals on the car, new battery less than a month old, dialetric grease on the posts and tight connections. Jumper cables weren't flipped. No flashing CEL. I checked all the fuses I could, need to get a fuse tester for the ones that aren't able to be visually inspected.

 

So if you're getting a click from the starter and no actual starting, it's an electrical problem. If it's not voltage, it's current. Possible there is too much grease on the terminals?

If it's not the battery or thr posts, the next junction common to all the affected systems is the battery to chassis ground strap and the battery positive cable itself. There was a similar case a few months ago where the positive cable and it's connections oxidized too much to permit enough current for the starter.

Likely the electrical issue developed while you were driving, causing the p0301 and things went downhill from there. If we follow that line of logic, a connection has worked itself loose from vibration while driving.

 

Well, think I figured it out. 120a main fuse seems to have burned, rather than blown. Seems like the ground for the fuse box may have come loose as it was not threaded at all, and I'll have to find a way to re-thread it.

 

Well that's fun!