My 850 developed a new quirk yesterday. It died while making a left hand turn. Everything was fine while starting the turn, radio was on and the a/c was blowing cold. Then, midway through the turn, it simply died.

I put a new battery in it an hour or so before this and was on a test drive.

Any thoughts on where to start?

This car is my daily driver and normally runs great.

Eric

 

One of the 850 quarks is the battery cables going bad. You need to check both ends and make sure they have good connections and are not corroded or have frayed connections.

What happened next? Did the car restart? Do you have a CEL?

 

Since the battery was just replaced, I would focus on the battery/cables/connections as the most likely culprit!

 

I had a problem with the battery connection before I realized that when you do a battery replacement you need to tighten BOTH sides of the positive cable terminal.

One side tightens the clamp on the post and the other tightens the power feed to the vehicle (smaller red wire). I loosened the one and it didn't come off so I loosened the other. When putting it back in I didn't realize I needed to tighten both back up. One for the battery and the other for the smaller wire. With my new battery I took it out for a drive and it died. Took me a while to find the loss of power. That little wire is the source of the vehicles power as the big one is only used for the starter.

 

OK. I'll check the battery cables. I remember loosening both sides of the positive battery terminal cable but not tightening both sides.

I went through the ground and positive cable connections last year. With a car this old, it helps to keep the wires clean.

The battery does have a charge and tested at 12.5 volts. So, if the cables are loose it shoud fire right up.

Thanks for the advice.

Eric

 

So happy to find this thread. We checked the nuts on both sides of the positive battery cable clamp and found one that was stripped. Replaced the nut, cleaned everything up and it fired right up. Keeping our fingers crossed that this is the solution. We'll report back in a couple weeks.