I heard from a friend of a friend, that someone had a 93 4 CYL coupe in great condition. Now... before you roll your eyes about the 4 cyl... this is a car that gets 30 MPG and I have 2 kids that are about to learn to drive. My options are to let them drive the Mach 1, which has too much HP and a standard transmission or the brand new F150 FX Sport truck, which is a large and expensive vehicle. Now you see my madness for looking at a 4 CYL...did I mention AUTOMATIC as well? It has enough power to be safe and easy to drive, yet not very expensive in case there are any accidents. Plus the insurance is almost nothing. I hear this coupe already has the interior completed and the paint is a dated but rare 93 Opal Frost Silver. It has the 10 hole rims on it and new tires and the car only has 77,000 miles. I was totally ready to pounce on it... then the "BUT" came..... It has an electrical problem. OH BOY.... that is never good.

I checked out the car and it was in great shape... and then I drove it.... YIKES... it would run along like a kitten and when you touched "anything" that required power, the car would almost totally shut down. One time when I was driving it, my wife says "lets make sure the emergency flashers work, we might need them" and she turned them on.... lol and the car would actually buck when the lights flashed on!! It might fix itself in a couple of minutes or it might not and you were stuck with a car that would only show 9 volts on the gauge, a pegged out temp gauge and of course the annoying bucking that only allowed the car to hit 65 MPH.....downhill...lol It is really hard to look COOL when it is bucking like that. Did I buy it? YOU BET YA!!

An electrical problem is usually very difficult, frustrating and expensive to find... I didn't say FIX... I said find. The fix is usually not too expensive. It is usually a process of elimination. This system is one of the systems on the car that usually gives you a tattletale of what and where the problem is, example blown fuse, hot wire etc…your mission... FIND THE TATTLETALE. My 89 would have a dead battery every Monday. I knew that it had nothing to do with Monday, it had something to do with the TIME it took to discharge the battery, which always ended up on Monday. I checked the obvious things like the battery, alternator and make sure the stereo amps were turning off. NO LUCK everything checked out fine, yet this "Monday" thing went on for 2 silly months. Finally, I got inside the car at night when it was pitch black looking for a tattletale...and TADA... the glove compartment was glowing. The switch was broke on the door and allowed the light to stay on inside the glove compartment. I was very lucky it didn’t’ start a fire in there since the light was on all the time, and the glove compartment was filled with paper. The car didn't get driven on the weekend, so it discharged the battery over the weekend and was dead on Monday. Simple fix, but 2 months of testing, charging and jumping the car before I found the problem.

The electrical system is the only system that is "operational" at all times. You do not have to turn on the battery to start the car... it is already charged and ready to go. Which means it is also vulnerable to problems "all the time". Everything on the vehicle depends on the electrical system. The battery starts the car, and that is it's only purpose. The alternator runs the car, and charges the battery. That is why you can start a car and disconnect the battery and it still runs, as long as the alternator is working. Just be careful with the loose cables that are still trying to accept a charge from the alternator. If you disconnect the battery and the car dies, that usually means the car was running off the battery and the alternator is no good. That is a good tattletale to get the alternator checked.

The most important part of the entire electrical system is the cables. YES I did say cables.. meaning the positive AND the negative. They are the "veins" for the electricity to flow to all accessories. They are constantly allowing current to pass through them at all times and if they are not in good shape.... then the current will NOT pass through them. If you only have ONE bad vein in your body, it will affect your entire body... not just one area and the cables are much the same. Most people change and check the positive cable and don't think anything about the negative cable, not realizing that BOTH cables are needed for the battery and the accessories to accept the charge from the alternator. A hot cable is a great tattletale on where the resistance is in the system, and usually indicates it needs to be changed.

Sorry for rambling on… the problem with the coupe??? It was a negative cable that was corroded enough, that the current couldn’t get to the accessories to run the car, so the car tried to run off the battery, which was weak. This one corroded cable was the culprit of a weak battery, a non-drivable car and a possible electrical fire because of the heat the backed-up current was causing in the alternator and the cable. I was relieved when I found the problem. I hope this helps you out by alerting you that an electrical problem CAN be a pain in the rear. But I have also given you an example of a situation where the buyer discounted the price of the car and it only took 30 minutes and a 5.00 cable to repair it. DON’T BE SCARED… lol.