I Think I Blew A Fusible Link

[playludesc]

Greetings, Pontiac noob here! About a year and a half ago my brother-in-law gave/abandoned his 2000 SE to me because it was having trouble and he didn't have time for it. Honestly, I didn't either, but hey, free car and I'm pretty handy. At the time it was having major stuttering and misfire issues so I replaced the ICM, coils, wires, and plugs, as well as fuel filter, and fuel pressure regulator. Today I removed the fuel injectors and cleaned them by attaching them to a can of carb cleaner and hitting them with voltage from a spare battery I have laying around. Everything went well and the car definitely seemed to be running more smoothly after a jump. I was still getting an intermittent misfire, but it was a lot less violent than before and the car wouldn't randomly die. Next best guess on that issue is checking the fuel pump and running a for-real spark test. Unfortunately, something (seemingly) much worse happened on my short test drive.

So I jumped the car using the underhood positive terminal and the big upright bolt near the alternator, as I've done many times before. Started after a few cranks as usual. I let it idle for a couple of minutes and gently revved it into the 3-4k rpm range. I got the flashing "Service Engine Soon" light for my intermittent misfire, but again, that was pretty normal and the car wasn't lurching around like crazy as it used to do, so I felt pretty good. I put her in gear, and drove two blocks, getting on it a little bit just to blow out the cobwebs. Came to a stop two blocks from my house and I had to stomp on the brakes a littler harder than I'd expect, but I'm used to driving a car that weighs about half the weight of this one. As the car came to a full stop, so did the engine. I figured the RPMs had dropped too low and the alternator couldn't supply enough current to the coils and didn't get any help from the battery since it's been sitting unused for several months. Walked back to my house, grabbed my portable jump-pack thingy and walked back. Hooked it up as usual, but there was zero power to the car. Literally no power any where. I touched the clamps of the jump-pack together and got plenty of spark, reattached them to the car, still nothing at all.

I'm fairly confident I didn't attach the clamps backwards and thinking back, I think the car lost all power immediately upon stopping, I don't think jumping caused the issue, I just thought the battery was too low to do anything useful. I'm guessing the car blew a fusible link or some other major fuse, I just have no idea which one or where a fusible link would be located.

Sorry for the novel, any help you guys could give would be great. Thanks in advance!

TL;DR: Car hadn't been started in several months, intermittent misfire, idled 5 minutes, drove two blocks, came to full stop, car dies, no electric anywhere. Wat do?

[haro1225]

Pretty sure the 00+ does not have fusible links. Sounds like the alternator isn't charging correctly.

[playludesc]

But even if the alternator isn't charging, I should still have some kind of power when I hook up my jump-pack. Right now, there's absolutely no power to the car regardless of if I attach the jump-pack to the above mentioned terminals under the hood, or directly to the battery under the back seat. Is there a gigantic fuse somewhere that serves the same purpose as a fusible link? All of the big ones I saw under the hood and under the rear seat appeared intact.

[crash93ssei]

Try hooking the pack right to the battery. There is no fusible links, but I have had problems before with the 2000+ with no power getting through to the positive jump post under the hood while jumping and getting jumped. I've been all through the wire harness (literally, completely gutted two cars to swap the harness and all on my last one!) And still have no explanation as to why that happens, but it does, and then after a while the post will have power again.

[Luxrain]

I've never had any luck with the posts under the hood for the h body's ever. I always use the battery for jumping. It the car is completely and totally dead the jump packs sometimes won't even light up the lights. If possible take the battery to an auto parts store for testing and a charge

[playludesc]

I tightened up all the battery terminals and cleaned the main ground at the floor pan in the back seat. Everything as far as that is concerned seems hunky-dory now, except that my voltage gauge in the dash is bouncing. Voltage meter across the terminals of the battery report very small fluctuations, and my OBD2 scanner shows slightly higher fluctuations. Actual readings seem to be in tolerance, but the gauge in the dash is bouncing from roughly 13.8 to 16. Meh.

However, I found out today that my brand new ICM must be bad, because my 3/6 coil doesn't fire and replacing that coil individually doesn't fix the problem. At least I know what's causing my continued misfire...

[96 SSEi]

hi, I had this in my 96 and the battery was junk - I suspect warped plates
gwt a multimetre and check for continuity between - and + - if there is an open circuit, its prob toast