HELP! Engine won't start

fatbelly

Yes. If you have a stop/start system you need a heavy duty battery. This site is good

https://www.tayna.co.uk

facade

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82171586#Comment_82171586

Yes they are.

You are probably looking at £200 from the AA, but that is fitted on your drive by The Very Nice Man.

It will be less trouble than fitting it yourself or even driving to Halfords- if they haven't got one/can't fit it right then and your battery has completely died you will be stuck at Halfords!

collinsca

Yeh definitely want to just get it sorted by RAC Man!

Just wanted to know the sort of 'damage'.

£200, oh well, my mate says his was £400 (cant recall what car he had at the time).

collinsca

RAC man estimate at 10 am was 11:40-2:40, that became 3:10-5:10, now it is 5:30-8:30.

I mean… what are we paying Breakdown over for!

Thankfully this has occurred at home and not when i went out earlier, or when we were away last week…. and yes there will be people broke down on motorways that take precedence… but the answer should be to get more mechanics!

The last time i used Breakdown was about 8yrs ago maybe and it was "guaranteed within the hour"!

Keep_pedalling

you are mainly paying to be rescued when you break down away from home. As you are home you will be classed as a low priority.

collinsca

Yeh, i get the priority calls, as ive said, people broke down on motorways that take precedence… but it's looking like 10hrs + (even if they turn up today) which to me isnt great service, and thats a degraded service from what i used to know.🙄

will look to change from RAC next year… any advice from others on a quicker service is appreciated.

oldernonethewiser

Trouble is changing provider is no guarantee of improved service.

Been there, done that.

Low priority and you will be well down the list.

paul_c123

An alternate plan could be to order the battery off (for example) eBay, then call a mobile mechanic and ask him to fit it once it arrives. Whether the cost saving of the battery would be more than the mechanic's fee (which might include a callout fee, for a small job) I don't know.

collinsca

yeh- agreed it’s not guaranteed. I wasn’t sure maybe if someone knew of a company that say had twice as many mechanics or something. You never know!

Yeh thanks for the suggestion. I’ll mull it over but timings wise I want it done asap.

Mildly_Miffed

The only roadside recovery companies with their own non-trivial size fleets are AA and RAC. Green Flag have a much smaller fleet. Everybody else just uses the same national network of local contractors (as the own-fleet ones also do).

But, yeh, expecting a roadside recovery company to prioritise a homestart from a flat battery at a weekend? Good luck…

Get your jump-box charged, and phone around the bike shops and tyre places tomorrow. Bet you can get one fitted at half the price of the recovery lot.

Yes, for stop-start, you'll need an AGM battery, and they're more expensive than normal wet lead. The car may also need to be "told" that it's got a new battery by a diagnostic computer.
https://www.tayna.co.uk/car-batteries/types/027-agm/

Have the stop-start and electronic power steering been working OK lately? They're usually the canaries in the coal mine for a failing battery.