2003 Hyundai Santa Fe. Just before the beginning of the year, when we had a sub-zero cold snap, the battery decided it was time to die. I had the battery replaced, and everything has been fine… until today.
I was getting ready to go to the store this morning, but couldn’t get the car to unlock with the remote. I unlocked the door manually with the key, got in, tried to start the car, and the battery was absolutely dead.
Here’s the weird thing. When I get in the car, I can hear a “clicking” sound as if the turn signal is on, and coming from that general area (between the steering wheel and driver’s side door). I hear this clicking even without the key in the ignition.
The headlights turn off automatically when the car is turned off, so the battery wouldn’t be drained from leaving headlights on. (And I’m not even sure I had them on when I came home from work yesterday.) No dome lights were left on, nothing else I can think of that would cause the battery to drain. I assume the battery drain is connected to the clicking noise I’m hearing, but have no clue what the clicking is.
Something isn’t shutting off when it should, and it sounds like it is intermittent which may make it hard to narrow down.
I have an old Cadillac that had a sticky fan relay in it for a while. The first time it killed the battery while I was at work, but fortunately I was able to get a jump from a friend. After that, I just started listening for the engine fan to stay on after I shut the key off. If ti stayed on, I opened the hood and gave the relay a small bit of percussive maintenance (I whacked it with my hand). It stuck a couple of times after that, about a month or two apart, and then hasn’t stuck again in over 8 years.
That’s just one personal example of what it could be. It could also be a hundred other things.
The clicking that you are hearing is probably a relay. If the relay itself were sticking, it wouldn’t click. If something is commanding the relay to turn on when it shouldn’t, that would drain the battery in about the right time frame for your symptoms.
Until you can get the problem solved, you can buy a battery tender from ye ol local auto parts store. Plug the car in every night, and as long as the battery drain isn’t too excessive, the battery tender will keep the battery nice and charged.
Not necessarily. One of the connections at the battery may have excessive resistance. (If this is the case, though, “light loads” such as the LCD on the radio will still work, but heavy loads will not.)
If you have a DVM, I would start by measuring the battery voltage with everything off, including the dome light. If it’s around 12.6 VDC, then the root cause is probably a bad connection on one of the battery posts or a bad ground. If it’s less than 12.0 VDC, then you likely have a current leak, or the alternator is not charging the battery when the car is running.
Crafter_Man, you are correct that the battery is not completely dead. There is enough power that the Door Ajar light lights up on the dash. But that’s about it. No other dash lights light up, no Door Ajar chime when they keys are in the ignition, the clock is dead, and as I mentioned in the OP there is not enough power for the door locks to work.
Unfortunately I don’t have a voltage meter or a battery charger, although maybe it is time to invest in one. I was going to try to jump it with my wife’s car a little later this afternoon and see if that got me anywhere.
You need to check the voltage and make sure the battery is really dead. Newer cars have emergency shut-downs to protect the car, and you will hear the click of the starter relay, but the starter won’t get anything from the battery. New cars do this for serious things like an oil or radiator fluid loss, but a few of them do it for stupid things, like a missing gas cap, or even overdue maintenance, like if you’ve gone 5,000 miles past the recommended timing belt change (or if you did get it changed, but the mechanic forgot to reset the shut-down).
Then, there’s also the possibility the battery is dead in your remote, and the car shut down when you unlocked it with the key, because cars have a security shut-down in case someone tries to copy the key, or hot-wire the car. Do you have another remote? or a way to get another battery? Try relocking the door with the key, then unlocking the door with the remote, and see if it comes back to life.
But at any rate, you really need to check the charge at the posts on the battery. It it has a charge, the first thing to check is the ground wire. They rust through sometimes. Then the posts. But read the manual, and see if it has any automatic shut-downs you can check easily.
I had a '98 Intrepid that started eating batteries, after it had been parked and was for sale. Every ten days or so, I would go out to take it for a 'fresher drive and it would be dead as a doornail. I replaced the battery (that is, had it replaced; it’s a BITCH to do in that model). Ten or so days later, sudden death. Ten or so days after that, again. Each time it was after a week, eight days, ten days of completely normal operation, not so much as a slight drop in battery power.
Never did figure it out. That and a small scrape on the fender made it too hard to sell at a fair price, so we donated it.
OK, at halftime of the basketball game I was watching, I went out and tried to locate exactly where the ticking sound was coming from. As far as I could tell, it sounded like it was coming from under the dash near the fuse box. I considered trying to pull fuses one by one to see if it stopped at any point, but there were a lot of fuses and it was cold out and I wanted to get back inside to watch the game.
After the game was over, I backed my wife’s car out of the garage and grabbed my jumper cables. When I stepped back from my car after I got the batteries connected, I noticed that my parking lights were lit up. I got in the car, put the key in the ignition, everything lit up and the Door Ajar chime started dinging, and the car started right up.
So… beats me what the heck was going on, but it seems to be just fine now.
Just off the top of my head it sounds like something is not right with your keyless entry/alarm system, being that they are connected to the parking lights (and horn) to give you that confirmation flash (and beep) when you lock it…
You need a volt meter to start any troubleshooting. I’d expect you have an issue with the alternator as a new battery going from fully charged to dead overnight is a very substantial drain.
So much incorrect information in one post.
Other than the suggestion to check the charge of the battery at the battery posts there is not one single correct or factual piece of information in this entire post.
My hat is off to you, I didn’t think it was possible to be this wrong this often in one post.
check your battery cables, at all connection points. a loose clamp at the battery, a corroded or loose ground strap, or other similar problem can be the cause.
Wait, so are you saying you were able to start the car without the battery from your wife’s car hooked up? Obviously if everything sprung to life and you were able to start the car with the other battery connected, you just jump started the car and that doesn’t really rule anything out (other than maybe a cable issue).
Parking lights left on will take a brand new battery down in short order and despite their misleading name parking lights are designed to stay on while you are parked. Even with the car locked and alarm set.
Did you check the position of the headlight switch?
That would be a great place to start your fault tracing.
I once bought a “brand new” battery from a cheap place that died within weeks. Investigation eventually revealed it had been on the shelf a really long time and essentially gone flat. They are supposed to not sell the really old ones but this place wasn’t that concerned with its rep.
When you connect up to the donor car, does this clicking continue ?
The clicking might be due to a low battery. The old battery might have failed due to poor maintenance by the charging system…
What that would indicate was that the alternator is not providing (full) power. That is, it might have enough power to keep all the electrics working, except that bit about charging the battery…
But anyway it takes an autoelectrician to sort it out … Something has to be fixed and its not for you to make wild guesses with !
Y’know, it’s fairly useless to jump into a thread, proclaim someone’s suggestions completely and totally wrong, and exit.
As in so many prior threads along this topic, there is the way shade-tree and home-garage folks check out and fix things, and there’s the way dealership mechanics with a decade of factory training and ASME badges all down their arm use a shop full of really expensive equipment to do it… and “differences” do not make either approach “wrong.”
If you’re referring to Rick’s response to RivkahChaya’s post, it’s not a matter of different approach, it’s a matter of actually being factually wrong.
Car won’t crank because of engine coolant or engine oil being low? Horsecrap.
Car won’t crank because of missing gas cap or overdue maintenance? Horsecrap.
Car won’t start because it was unlocked with key rather than remote? Horsecrap.
You apparently haven’t read this thread very closely
The OP does not own a voltmeter. I can (and have done so on this board many times in the past) instruct someone on how to test both a battery and alternator using just a voltmeter. They don’t own one. I could tell them to grab a hydrometer and test the battery, but if they don’t have a voltmeter what do you think the fucking odds are that they have one of those?
That leaves with tea leaves which I have never found to be very accurate for checking car batteries.
You also didn’t read or perhaps understand post #14 where I said since the parking lights came on the OP might want to check the headlight switch.
Now I realize checking the position of the headlight switch is a highly technical diagnosis the kind that is usually left to highly trained professionals. I know this is complex but try to follow along. If the parking lights came on when power is restored to the vehicle you need to find out why. Now to find this out you could start at the headlights and follow the harness back to the source of the fault or you might take a leap of faith that the professionals know what they are talking about and check the position of the headlight switch first.