Car Acting Up like Crazy!!! what in the world! HELP!

jstrunk · Aug 3, 2008

Ok, so quick scenario! parents called me to start there car at about midnight... so i drive on over with my jumper cables... (its an 2004 Camry? 4cyl) it wouldnt start... my dad kept freaking cranking it every 10 seconds dispite me telling him to stop, each time would surge my car heavily.... so i get off it, someone else rolls buy with some huge muscle... lets it go for a bit, he cranks it and good! awesome!

So he gets home then the camry dies *dur battery is 100% dead*

I try to start my car... it doesnt... naturally its been sucked dry... so i roll it and drop the clutch... starts... ok... but now i had by ABS and my TC light come on... and blink.. quite a bit... also would surge while i step on the gas a little...

so at this time it was about 1am-1:30am... i need to get back... so i drove her almost to my house (the whole time it was bucking and acting all weird with the lights) so i pulled over turned the car off and put up the hazards...

at this point, i cant let my baby take more abuse... so... time to reset the ecu...

I do the battery thing... i even reseeded every stupid fuse (since i didnt know which one was which, no manual on me.... dah)... roll started her again since no power..... and guess what... it seems to be even worst...

throttle would kill, lights would flicker on the dash, cd player in operative, headlights didnt work (which sucked because it was really late) and car bucked and bucked.... so i got her home about 5 minutes ago 2:15am-ish with it to die just as it rolls into the parking lot..... what the crap! my car will not go anywhere and its acting VERY badly....

So... question for you all... i think its the ECU.. needs to be reflashed or... even a new one installed...

Do you know if this is what the problem is... and what all can i except from fords end in terms of cost? thanks everyone... sorry for the long story....

norcalfocus01 · Aug 3, 2008

well not my area of expertice but it does sound like you fryed your ECU

i know that when i bought my wife suv the dealer said to never give anyone a jump becausw the ECU would fry easily.

the other think i would do is try and get a code reader and see if gives anything that way

croto5000 · Aug 3, 2008

i'm not sure how the ecu could fry as a result of jumping another car (though i could be wrong). you may have ended up with a loose connection after the whole ordeal resulting in your car's behavior. or your dad's desire to crank every ten seconds may have buttfuddled your alternator and now it wants nothing to do with you.

frying the ecu seems unlikely to me as it's very isolated from the circuit you add by jumping someone else's car. the only instance you outright wouldn't want to give someone else a jump is when one party has a diesel vehicle. aside from that though, as long as your clamp is on the positive terminal nice and tight and you've found a solid ground point in your engine bay, you should be able to go to town.

my vote is for a loose connection and/or spent alternator. get down to advance auto/auto zone if you can and get that bad boy tested free of charge

whynotthinkwhynot · Aug 3, 2008

I'm thinking loose connection also. Yeah it was tight before, but when you go clamping jumper cables to it you could've loosened it some.

Have your dad buy you a new battery too [thumb]

whynotthinkwhynot · Aug 3, 2008

PS: I've jumped a few cars with the Focus before. Most Fords have low output alternators, so there's not a lot of juice left over to begin with. You want to charge up the other battery for a few minutes before attempting to crank via the jump. Turn off all your interior accessories- radio, AC, etc., while charging. When it is time to crank, rev the engine to 2-3k rpm to be sure that there is extra power available while cranking.

It is not impossible to fry an ECU, sudden drops in the system voltage would cause an increase in load- more heat, etc. Let's hope that's not what happened, but I'd think if you did that the engine would not start at all.

PURO LATINO · Aug 3, 2008

its sounds like your alternator is done with my car did the similar jerking and light show when mine went good thing the focus isn't a heavy car to push mine died in the middle of a busy hwy early morning about 5am and i had enough sense to jump out and use the momentum to get it to the nearest parking lot and just a heads up there isn't much room between the firewall and the alternator to get it out good luck with it..

oddballish · Aug 3, 2008

Start with a new or recharged battery, check and see what the alternator out put is with a VOM. If you did suck the battery dry and the Alt killed itself trying to keep up it would put every thing in to a low voltage state and that can cause a lot of assorted problems. Go back to the source (the battery) and work out from there. Good luck and I hope it’s not the ECU .

Car Acting Up like Crazy!!! what in the world! HELP!

jstrunk

norcalfocus01

croto5000

whynotthinkwhynot

whynotthinkwhynot

PURO LATINO

oddballish

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