Car won't start - ideas/suggestions?

ratrace

Grey_Critic said:

I had a hospital appointment yesterday and my son took. When I came out the car would not start - everything worked except it would not turn over. RAC came out and jump started. Battery tested and yes it was duff. Offer of a new battery £173 - we declined and drove home. Picked up a new Exide battery this morning and fitted it - Cost me £61.65 - car is on a 13 plate and it is the original battery

The cold snap has worked its magic. My mate told me he had 3 yesterdaey

yep that time of the year, had to help next door as her would not start 

checked the battery health with my diagnosic computer. battery was dead, poped over to gsf bought a bosch one for £85 after trade discount fitted it, job done must have saved her loads over the years lol

she retired so dosent drive as much so thats whats proberly killed the battery and the fact it was 9 years old

glad you sorted it

Arunmor

Covid killed off my car and the 24V (2 x large batteries delivered on a pallet) in the DAF LF45 that stung a bit.

facade

"modern" charging systems are particularly useless when coupled with all the electronics continually draining the battery- like listening for someone trying to steal it with one of those relay devices.....

I regularly have to charge both my cars as the batteries just discharge by themselves, and the low emission charging system simply can't be bothered putting anything back in the short trips that I do now.

The electrocar took 14 hours on the accumate (12 yesterday, 2 today) despite being run for over 2 hours this week, the Suzuki is on charge now, but won't be charged at bedtime, so it will need a couple more hours tomorrow after it goes shopping.

If I don't charge the Suzuki, after 6 weeks or so it won't start even though I use it at least once a week, with a good hour's run once a month.

I daren't let the electrocar battery go down.......

Goudy

I've just put a new battery on my car.
It wasn't quite dead yet but short trips have taken it's toll and it started to show a few issues.

Main one was that is just kept tripping it's battery save, ie kept powering down all the electrics almost immediately after I turned the engine off.
Usually it would keep the dash, windows and radio active for a good while but recently it decided 1 minutes without the engine was enough.

I got a lazy cold start, it only just turned and fired so I stuck the battery on charge. My charger quickly said it was charged a bit too quickly so I suspected it's ability to store amps was waning.

This helped for a week and the power down to save the battery improved, but not for long. It was back to one minute again in a few days.

I ordered a new Varta battery from Tanya. Far cheaper than elsewhere and had it delivered to a local NAPA to pick up.

I have a device that plugs into the OBD port to save all the car's setting when you disconnect the battery but I couldn't find it for love nor money, so I just swapped the batteries over.

Turns out these devices save more setting than just the radio setting on a modern car.
It ran like a bag of spanners for an hour or so, it had obviously lost something it's been learning over these last five years or so.
The gear changes were rough.(it's a DCT). Thumping a few down changes and hanging onto the RPM far longer than normal for up changes.
The miles remaining for the fuel went mental. I know there was half a tank, the normal gauge told me that but the range went from 500 miles to 4 and back to 500 again within a few minutes before settling on 120 miles for the rest of that day, yet with the low fuel light on. I drove 90 miles with it like that with a couple of restarts and it was only the next day did it settle down.

It's back to normal again now, but oddly the battery change didn't cause me to lose my radio, sat nav or phone settings?? Go figure!