Car wouldn’t crank. I used jumper cables and click only. I was having it towed and driver tried his jump pack but no go. He had clamps on battery top posts. He then moved ground clamp to alternator bracket and the motor cranked fine. I cleaned battery terms and my charger says about 2 amp draw. Shouldn’t it draw more then 2 amps?
Ground cable connection to engine block my next thought.
No expert on battery chargers, and you didn’t way what you’re using, but many have multiple settings. Whenever possible I charge on the 2A setting b/c as far as I know low and slow is better for the battery long-term. (Anyone should feel free to correct me on this as I’m not an expert on batteries either.)
And “smart” chargers start from where the battery “is.” E.g. if it’s gone into a de-sulfate mode, then it won’t be doing high amps at first.
I’m not sure I’m following your logic here. If the car didn’t start when the jump pack was on the negative terminal but it did start when the jump pack was on the bracket, then you have an issue with the negative cable, not the connection to the battery or the battery itself. Therefore you really don’t know the condition of the battery or how much charge it actually needs at this point, but that doesn’t seem relevant to me. I don’t know exactly what your cable looks like, but you probably want to check for corrosion under where the insulation starts. If the cable is old and a replacement is cheap, it might be simplest just to replace it.
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The car had been sitting for 6 months. I took off the neg battery clamp and the charger is attached to the top post. It is an automatic charger and can go up to 8amps but it is only drawing 2 amps. If the battery was dead I expect more than 2 amp draw. I did not check the battery voltage during any of these charging efforts.
Edit: 7/21 sticker.
How old is the battery? And some voltage reading wouldn’t hurt.
But since it’s an automatic charger it’s “smart” in at least some respect. So if I had a battery sitting around for 6mos, and it was dead, then I wouldn’t expect it to draw a lot of amps to start. Low and slow.
Not after 6 months of inactivity, the battery’s internal resistance will be very high. Allow at least 24 hour of charge time to desulfate the battery.
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I agree with Lion9, replace the negative cable, might replace the positive cable while you are at it.
Simple test, hook one end of your jumper cables (or a heavy gage wire with clamps on both ends) to the neg battery terminal and the other end to a engine bracket, alt etc (about anything metal hard mounted to the engine) and see if it starts normal, if it does it is your battery to engine ground, you can also do this as battery to chassis and chassis to engine… Free to do and take a few seconds to do…
Charger was on overnite and it started ok this morning. I’m doing heads on motor so I can check the cables better.
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I guess if I was going to do a major job on the engine like removing the head(s), the ground cable would be replaced without any further investigation.
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The battery was dead (discharged) and the jumper unit had a poor connection, that is no reason to replace battery cables.