87 5000CS Avant with electrical issue

[Cody Forbes]

Ha, funny enough I used that same Home Depot splice on mine about 8 years ago and it recently failed. Seems some moisture got to it and it rusted to bits.

-Cody (mobile)

On Dec 7, 2011, at 3:32 PM, Peter Golledge <petergolledge at gmail.com> wrote:

> Splice is under carpet in passenger footwell, basically looks like a lump in the cable.  If it has not been done, just do it, they ALL fail eventually.  I used a splice from home despot which is designed for patching underground mains cables.  Bigscrew terminals with some shrink tube over it will outlast even an Audi!
> 
> Check your Alt brushes also, can be removed from back of alt, had those go intermittent and drive me made with random low voltate stuff.
> 
> On 12/7/2011 10:52 AM, Stephen Sherman wrote:
>> We had a cold snap the last few days (-10F or so at night, around 0F during the day), and our old, trusty 87 Avant did not handle it well.  Not the expected problems, won't crank or start; those things were fine. Rather it was an intermittent loss of electrical power: headlights dim, dash lights dim, battery icon comes on, anti-lock switches itself off. Worse at low RPM. It seemed at its worse, that the voltage was getting so low that the ECU and engine was starting to not work. I ended up being able to drive it home by staying in low gear to keep the RPMs up, and rev'ing the engine at stops.
>> 
>> Did a quick check, and voltage at the battery is ~13.7v with the engine at 2000rpm (this with the very low battery right when I got home). Seems within the range of a working alternator and regulator. Maybe a bit low.
>> 
>> So my question is (of course) what is causing this. I remember reading on the list about the union/splice in the battery line, somewhere on the passenger foot well. (details on exactly where to find this would be appreciated), but it seems odd that that connection could be causing this problem, yet the car would still be able to start just fine in cold weather. Same about thoughts on the alternator going, since it does seem to recover at higher rpms..
>> 
>> Any thoughts on what might be the problem here, or what to check out?
>> 
>> TIA
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> 
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