Heres the thing, today I stop for coffee on the way to work and I come back out and the truck will not start. The starter just clicks and spins but wont engage. My interior light is very dim and my stereo lost its settings. Tried jumping it but the booster cables started smoking and melting. So I run across the road to my buddys work and borrow his car to try and get the truck running, after having the cables hooked up and running his car at 2000RPMs for about 5 minutes my truck finally starts. I left it running while I took his car back, the idle is going from 500-2200. On the drive home I cant let off the gas or it almost dies. Turned the heater on and the RPMs shot up and the motor bucked real bad. Finally I pull in the driveway and let off the gas and the RPMs shoot up to 2500 and it just dies.

I put my other battery in and still nothing, poured a mix of water and baking soda over the corroded part of the wire and it fires right up. The old battery was still fully charged, can some corrosion in the positive cable alone be enough to cause this?

 

You'd seriously be surprised at all of the weird problems that a corroded battery cable can cause.. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that was your problem. Just be sure to check all the other cables for corrosion also.
-David

 

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if your truck's problems were due to major electrical components not getting enough voltage. I've found that once a cable has corroded, you can clean it, but it will just corrode quickly again. I have had better luck just replacing the cable...they are cheap, why not?

Hunter

 

Also, if the corrosion is at the end of the cable that attaches to the battery, the battery must be replaced. The post seal is cracked, and it will continue to eat away at every cable you attach to it.

 

The insulation is split where the wire joins the cable end. Didnt look too bad but once I looked closely at it, the corrosion is right through the copper strands. I put my other battery in yesterday. Im gonna replace the cable tomorrow. Its what I couldnt see that was causing the problems.

 

i,(my wife)has a 92 bronco and we had the same problem in i think.....illinois..comming back from north carolina a couple christmas ago, good thing i got a multimeter for chrstmas that year!!! i diagnosed it in the parkin lot and rigged it to get home,,,so i kinda forgot about it and put off really fixing it till this past summer... the positive batt cable is friggin expencive!!! i think it was close to a hundred bucks!!! because it goes all the way down to the starter and it spices off into two full size wires,so i got a marine clamp and put my own ends on cables that i got in bulk and it works perfect(the marine clamps have a wing nut and a stud on them so you can put alot of feeds comming off the clamp) still cost me alot but it looks and funtions very well , but it is a pain tryin to soilder those bigg cables

 

I ended up having to replace it yesterday. Went to class in the AM and came home before work. Went out to start it and nothing, damn thing was full of corrosion again after only 24 hours. Found another end and a piece of 1 guage wire, rigged that up with a ring terminal and problem solved. (though I tossed another piece of wire in the toolbox just it case it corrodes to **** again)