Ok guys, get ready. Cause this is gonna be long.
The main problem I am having is that my battery wont hold a charge for more than a couple days. The secondary problem is that my belts won't stop squealing like a banshee, but I'll get to that in a minute.
When trying to figure out why the battery wont hold a charge, I started with the easy stuff. The alternator is new, and checks out fine. Everything from the distributor to the spark plugs are all new. A friend of mine told me it might be the negative battery cable.
My first major question has to do with the negative battery cable. The old one is completely shot, so I got a new one. There is only one problem. The original goes from the negative post to the engine, which makes sense. What I am concerned about is this:
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From this pic you can see where it connects to the engine (blue square) but it also is connected to the frame and the wheel well. The new cable doesn't have places to mount this way, which I was told will work by they people at Advance isn't needed. So I figured I would ask yall about it before I hooked the new cable up and turned the car on.
This brings me to the belts. About a month ago, my old belts started to squeak a little bit. So I decided it was time to get new ones. The new ones proved to be EVEN WORSE. Like 100% worse. So, my thought process is that a slow leak is getting on my belts, causing them to slip and squeal, which is causing the alternator to not charge my battery correctly. The only problem with this theory is that I have known about a slow leak of some kind since I owned the car. The coolant leaks very slowly, as does the power steering and the oil. All three are slow enough to manage until I can find the time and the money to really get in there and fix the problems. The water pump is new, with a new gasket. The oil pan gasket is new. So I have no idea where those leaks are coming from. All I do know is that after cleaning the engine and surrounding parts, after about a week the bottom of the engine (and surrounding parts) are all wet. Sometimes its coolant, sometimes oil. I can never really tell. The dirt and filth are ingrained in the metal by this point (the guy before me did not take care of this car). But the problem is that I have been fixing the leaks over time, and the belts/battery have had no issues up till this point. So I have no idea what is happening.
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