Wire issue after changing battery cable

YABOIJIMBOSLICE

MEMBER
2004 VOLKSWAGEN GOLF
2.0L
4 CYL
2WD
MANUAL
330,000 MILES

So recently I changed my cars positive battery cable to a new PICO brand 4g battery cable and now my car seems to have problems with power on the first turn of the key. The connector for the fuse box on the battery is where I am guessing the problem is because the connector wasn't exactly designed to fit the new PICO terminal so I made it fit as best as I can and tried to make the connection as solid as I can, but it still has the issue. On the first turn of the key after a while of the car sitting around the car starts extremely rough and then shuts off, and on the second turn of the key it starts with no issue, but if it sits for only a few hours then it will happen again. Something similar happened before I changed the battery cable but on a much much smaller scale. Before the car would take a few seconds and sometimes randomly honk upon when turning the key, and would start slightly rough but even out after a few seconds.

1 Reply

KASEKENNY

MECHANIC
18,907 POSTS

This sounds like a couple possible things and if this all started to get worse after the cable replacement then we need to start with checking the fuel pressure when this happens.

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/how-to-check-fuel-system-pressure-and-regulator

If the fuel pump is only getting a portion of the 12 volts that it needs then it may not be supplying proper voltage.

However, I would expect this to cause the engine to not start but it could have just enough fuel to start the engine, run poorly, and then shut off just like you are seeing.

Here is a guide that will help with causes of stalling at idle as this may start to shed some light on this as well:

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/stall-at-idle

The fact that this happened prior, even not as dramatic, I doubt it is related to this but let's start with this stuff and see what turns up, then we can decide where to go from there.

Thanks