Dead battery or ???
 

Background:
A little background... I bought an '81 corvette about 1 year ago (couldn't find a nice enough '80 at the time) and drove it back from St Louis (~500 miles) without any problems. I drove it pretty regularly on the weekends without any problems all summer. Then I parked it in the garage for the winter.

Symptoms:
I went to get it out this spring only to find it won't start. Nothing comes on at all... not even the battery light. No cranking, nothing. I hook it up to a trickle charger (thinking dead battery) but the charger says the batter is full. So, I put a jumper on the batter and BOOM! It fires right up with no problem. I drive the car around and all is good. I turn it off and ... dead. Wont start without the jumper. So I thought maybe I need to get a "good" drive in to get a charge into the battery. Jumped it and drove it around for ~45 minutes. Wont start.

Question:
Could this be just a completely dead battery? Or, some suggest a ground cable is the culprit. What do you all think? I'm not ready to drop it off at the mechanics just yet.

Thanks!
bphein1980

Make sure both cable connections to the battery terminals are tight and corrosion-free, Next check the ground cable to the chassis connection.

By the way, if you suspect that a battery is drained fully, use a charger, not a tender to bring it back to full charge.

You might also want to have the battery load-tested to see if it is in fact, good.

Thanks for the reply Dave01. All the cables look corrision free with good connection. I cleaned them anyways and reconnected. I dont have a battery tester, so I will probably just pull the battery and take it down to my local mechanic for a quick test.

Thanks!

That's probably your best bet. They will have to make sure the battery is fully charged before running the load test. I forgot to ask you if you typically keep the trickle charge hooked up all Winter.

Dave