Climbed into my car this morning, put the key in the ignition and turned it to the first position and everything came on fine. Dashboard lights, etc. Turned it to the starting position and everything died. Had my battery checked and it tested fine. I'm assuming I blew a fuse, but which one?
Thanks
Hello and Welcome to the forum.
Unfortunately, could be a number of things that would cause this issue. Need a little more information to help point you in the right direction.
When you turn the key to start, did you hear the starter relay make a "clicking" noise? Have you tried restarting the car, anything happen? Anything different happened? When you say everything died, did you mean after you turned the key to start - nothing electrical worked after that point on? Lights? Dash display? Radio, etc.? What still works? What doesn't work? How did they test the battery - just the voltage, or did they load test the battery?
Could be a bad fuse, most of the bigger ones are under the hood - starter, EFI, alternator, etc. Could also be a bad relay, faulty electrical connection(s), could still be a bad battery. There is also a fusible link block (the alternator's 100 amp fuse is part of it) - which is basically a big wire/fuse block - that almost never goes bad, but it if burned out - you may have a more serious electrical problem with the car (dead alternator, one of the main source cables is shorted, etc).
Thanks for the response. When I turned the key there was a bit of a snap and everything went dead. No clicking. No nothing. Once I turned the key nothing worked, all the electrical died including all the internal indicators, radio, windows, locks, everything. I took the battery out (Diehard Gold) and had Sears test it. They ran it through a whole list of things and said it checked out just fine.
I tried turning the key again the other night and there is no power anywhere.
Doesn't sounds very good - complete power loss is pretty rare. At least you know that there is a problem very close to the battery source. The power flows from the battery to the main fusible link/block, then forks off to the alternator fuse (100A) and the engine junction block (40A mains and 15A EFI fuses are here).
Since nothing works - it does sound like the fusible link had either burned out or completely got disconnected from the battery, since that feeds all other systems. The trick is to find out what caused it to burn out or loosen up in the first place - otherwise, you could run into this happening immediately after you replace/tighten the fusible link and try and start the car.
If you have a multimeter handy, you can check on from ground points and trace back the wiring - see if there is anything open (broken or disconnected) or shorted to ground (hot or source voltage touching anything metal on the body).
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