My daughter was driving home in our 1986 toyota pickup when the engine and the radio stopped working. The hazard lights, head lights, tail lights all come on. I am 45 miles away so I told her to try to restart the vehicle in park and neutral. She said there was no response (clicking noise/dash lights). The battery connections are tight. I will be going to work on it tomorrow but need some suggestions on where to start. Main breaker? Grounds? Any help will be appreciated. thanks.https://www.yotatech.com/forums/imag.../Campfire2.gif

 

Might be the alternator. Sounds similar to something that happened to me but i was not driving very far. I did lose alot of power and the radio quit working. If it did not want to start anymore the battery is probably drained as well if the alternator went bad. Hope this helps.

 

Check all the fuses, don't forget fusible links. May have developed a short to ground somewhere and blew a fuse or fusible link.

 

my truck used to do this. it was the negative battery cable clamp. it was slightly falling apart and hard to find. but every time you would hit a bump the truck would shut off. and then be able to start right up. Im not saying this will be your problem, im just suggesting it could be something as simple as a loose ground or battery clamp. good luck

 

Well one needs to start at the beginning .

Check the battery Voltage,

I don`t suppose she noticed anything before it quit low voltage or the light coming on. Hit a really hard bump??

Really deep puddle??

How did it quit slowly just run out of power or like a switch was thrown??

If the battery voltage drops to low the ECU will shut down.

If it was a alternator problem it would have had to be not working for quite a while

I would look at the fusible links and the grounds if the battery voltage checks out good.

Good luck

 

Thanks for the suggestions on my way to check it out now. I'll post what I find.

 

One problem that has plagued me, is the connection between the under hood fuse box and the battery. When that wire's connection gets loose/dirty My truck will die randomly. But when that happened, nothing that ran on the battery would work.

 

Here is what I found. The Alternator was bad. I replaced it but still had nothing but Hazard lights and head lights. Visually inspected all fuses,relays and fusible links. Everything looked fine. Then I started tracing my way from the cab fuse box to the outside fuse box. Long story short when the voltage regulator on the alternator went out it must have fried the 80 amp main fusible link. Again visually it looked fine but it was dead. I appreciate all the help. You saved me a lot of time that I would have been hunting and pecking trying to figure it out. I hope I can return the favor one day.