This town is too small for taxi service, so I can’t do what I used to do in Seattle and call for a jump-by-cab. mr emilyforce is abroad. My neighbors seem to be on vacation. Both my car and my husband’s truck’s batteries seem to be dead - enough juice to turn on some dash lights but no turning over the ignition. I own an old jump-start-yourself thingy but we lost the cord to recharge it when we moved recently. We moved from Texas to New England, and it’s been well below freezing at night this week, which I assume is the cause of the problem, though it’s around 40 F at the moment. I haven’t started either vehicle since Saturday. I’ve never previously owned a car while living in a cold place.
Help! What should I do? I’m within walking distance of a 7-11 gas station, but the auto mechanics are off for the holiday already. How do you address a battery dead due to coldness? Is that probably the problem, anyway?
If the battery died of old age - which is what happens when it no longer can hold a charge - then you need a new battery. Jump starting it won’t do much good, as all you end up with is a car that is running but has a dead battery. It won’t hold a charge for the next time you want to start the car.
If the battery died because your alternator is shot, then a jump will keep you going for a few starts until you can fix your alternator.
How old are the batteries? Is this the first cold snap of the year? Are you a AAA member?
If the battery won’t start the car it’s charge is down low enough that it needs to be charged, jump-started, or replaced, there’s nothing else to do. If you had a battery charger, I’d say charge the batteries with that.
Otherwise your only choice is to call a tow truck to jump you, or get a friend to come over that owns jumper cables. You’re not a member of AAA are you? Also, your car insurance might cover jump starting, although maybe not in your driveway.
Batteries do discharge more quickly in cold environments. But if it’s only been 3 or 4 days since the vehicle was driven, the battery may be on it’s last legs anyway.
If you hook jumper cables up, you might be able to get one of the cars started. Once it’s ran for a while, you can then get the other one started. Odds are, that probably won’t work, which means, I’m afraid, you might be SOL until you can find someone to help you. Local police departments some times will be nice enough to send an officer out to jump your car if you call them (provided, of course, you don’t call 911). You could also try calling the local tow truck company and see if they’d be willing to send someone around to jump your cars.
Unless it got really cold (like below -10F), I think it’s more likely that your batteries are getting long in the tooth and need to be replaced, than the cold is what did them in.
Well, if either vehicle had a standard transmission, as opposed to automatic, you could get it going by pushing and disengaging the clutch at the appropriate moment, but that would require assistance. And if assistance was available you may as well get a jump start.
Jump starting and leaving it running while you went about your chores seems the only choice. And then get the batteries replaced. How do two batteries in two separate vehicles simultaneously die?
control-z and Telemark, I appreciate it, but isn’t it odd to think BOTH vehicles would just happen to come down with lame batteries or alternators at the same time? Or is it?
I don’t know how old the truck battery is. My car battery is maybe three years old. Both were bought in Texas.
It’s colder this week than it’s been since we moved here, but not that much colder since the last time each vehicle started without problems. It hasn’t been super-duper cold, either - maybe 28 F at bottom. I last drove the car on Saturday, the truck a couple of weeks ago; it’s been frosty for almost a month now.
FTR no, I don’t have AAA; don’t remember whether my insurance covers this and am off to find out.
Get AAA now especially since you live in New England and are a transplanted Southerner like me. It is completely worth it and has saved me more money and aggravation over the years than anything else. I think you can sign up and make a call right away.
You need new batteries. Mine died in my work parking lot this year. I got a jump start from a passing person and then drove to the auto supply store (you can’t turn the vehicle off until you get to the store because it probably won’t start again). Replacing a car battery is easy. Al it takes is a wrench and maybe a screwdriver. You just loosen the leads and pull them off and then remove two bolts on the bracket that hold the battery in place. Even a non-technical person should be able to pull it off in 10 minutes with ease. The auto supply store can tell you which new battery to get. You exchange the old one inside.
They saved my ass a few times when I lived in Vermont and it didn’t get much more rural than that. It may take an hour or so for them to get there but when you are staring at your vehicle skidded to the bottom of an icy ditch, the nominal cost and wiat time for AAA seems like a pretty sweet deal. Repeat, repeat, repeat and it starts to seem like the best deal ever. AAA doesn’t have its own trucks generally speaking. They just sponsor local garages in a general area. I doubt the garages do a slow down for a AAA call unless there are full paying customers stacked up so you can’t do much better.
It does seem likely to me that both batteries don’t have the whatsits to cope with cold - that they were good enough for Texas or mild weather here but not enough now. And then it could just be my own damned bad luck that they conked out at the same time, the afternoon before Thanksgiving.
So - for right now, as in in the next hour, before it gets dark - the only hope I have of getting the car to move is to get a jump, or to schlep a new battery back to it? I can’t get it warmer somehow and have it heal itself?