Okay so I was working and my XJ today and thought it would be a good idea to Clean out my throttle body and Idle Air Control Valve. All i had laying around was some Mass air flow sensor cleaner and thought it shouldn't be a problem. So I went ahead and sprayed with everything in place cleaned out a bunch of gunk and thought everything was good.

Well not so much, I turned her over and it started right up, ran a little rough for a minute (I figured it was just burning off and drying out and left over cleaner). After that it ran just fine. I let it warm up and then turned it off to move my car out from behind it so I could take her for a test drive. So I tried to start it back up and everything seemed fine, all the interior lights turned on, i heard the fuel pump prime and went to turn it over. When I did everything died and stayed down for about a minute. That includes my lights that are hard wired into the battery.

So I waited a minute all the power came back and tired to start it again. Same thing it died without doing anything and all the power was down for a few minutes this time. I tried trouble shooting it the best i could but im not the best with anything dealing with electricity.

So my question is could my spraying the Idle Air Control Valve have burnt out a relay? like the Auto shutdown? I tired switching the other relays around with no change. I tired jump starting it to make sure it wasn't a battery going bad at a random time. No change. So no im scratching my head because i have no idea where to go from here. I also took the IACV and
TB aprt and completely cleaned them out just to check on it. everything looks fine although I read afterward that you're no supposed to spin the IACV so i might have to replace that now.

Anyone ever had this problem? Oh and I have a 92 sport I6. I tried getting a bunch of pics but my computer isn't working with me either.

 

Battery connection issue symptoms.

 

try disconecting and reconnecting your terminals. thats what did it for me. i actually had to do it a couple times and reposition them for better connectivity?

 

So I actually tried that a few times after posting this last night and I just tried it again this morning just to make sure. Whats weird is I found that when I disconnect the terminal, it wont make a difference until I ground the positive to the frame. when I do that it discharges power thats being held in the system. Is that normal? I can connect it afterward and everything seems fine until i try to start it again.

 

Well in case anyone's interested I finally fixed my problem. Thank God for dads and their wisdom, he came over and figured it out in about 2 minutes. Ended up being that both of the ground wires were bad. I hooked up a one wire from my jumper cables from the ground post to the hood catch and she started right up!

Now off to go fix all the rest of the stupid problems she always has.