C Ory

ok, so heres the deal. I went out to my accord, hit the disarm button for my alarm. it disarms, and i get in, and put the key in the ignition. i turn the key on, the dash lights all light up, and i go to crank it up, and it does 1/2 a crank, and then i loose everything. no dash lights or anything. i thought the battery was dead. i get some jumper cables, and try starting it again, and still no dash lights or anything. i get a test light, and the battery is lighting up the test light. i check all the fuses under the hood, and they are all good. i go to check the fuses under the dash, and im not getting any power to the interior fuse block (so i think). i go back under the hood, and try using the strut tower as a ground for the test light, and if i touch the negative battery terminal/cable the test light lights up. wtf. if i put the test light on the neg terminal, and touch the pos terminal, it lights up. so its like the body has become a power source, and not a ground. can anyone help me??? its pissing me off, and i cant figure it out. any help is good help. thanks.

Fabrik8

Most likely you have a bad ground, or corrosion on your power or ground connection. You're reading a difference in potential from point to point, you're seeing that your battery positive, batt negative, and chassis are at differrent potentials. I would be willing to bet you have some bad cable resistance caused by corrosion. Clean both battery terminals carefully before going any farther.
This sounds like the problem I had when my ground cable from my battery to my engine block became corroded at the block connection. This also sounds more like my GF's Frontier P/U when the ground terminal cracked and was loose.. Everything worked fine but it would barely crank (and woundn't catch or run) because of the current needed.

You need to use a multimeter, test lights are crap for actually figuring out anything useful. You are being confused by the limitations of what the test light is actually capable of testing/displaying.
When you use a multimeter, pay attention to whether you're reading positive or negative voltage between two points. I troubleshot my WRX in 10 seconds with a multimeter, I was reading 3 volts from my battery negative to my engine block, bad news. (there should be as little voltage difference as possible between those two points)

C Ory

it was just a bad ground from the battery to the body. i was outside messing with it, pulling the cables off, and just touched the neg cable leads to the body, and the alarm started going off. so i just cleaned up where the grounds meet the body, and put it back together, and it works like a champ