I got home from the trip, and my car is dead. It has not been a great week.
We really enjoyed our stay at Casa Munras Garden Hotel in Monterey. Fairly good restaurant. great rooms. I was there in 2019.
You should treat yourself… To a cheap Miata!
So sorry to hear about that. 
I assume the battery is dead … or am I off base?
Shortly after ignition keys were replaced with push-button start plus fobs, my brother went to the airport, parked his car, flew out, came back a few days later, and his car would not start. Cranked fine but no fire. In an era, unlike in the 1960s, when cars just don’t do that.
He finally noticed the gas gauge was pegged out on E. He knew he had about 3/4ths of a tank when he parked since he’d bought gas like the day prior.
Yup. He’d left it running unnoticed, unloaded his bags from the trunk, locked it with the fob, and left with the fob. Oops.
I didn’t do anything quite that bad, but there was one time I arrived at the airport in the wee hours of the morning for an early flight. I parked in the long term lot, turned on the dome light to write down where I’d parked, unloaded my bags, and headed to the terminal. Astute readers might notice what step I didn’t do. Yeah, I left the dome light on. A week and a half later I returned to find my battery stone dead.
That was back before I had a smartphone. Nowadays I don’t write down where I parked; I just take a picture of the sign with my phone.
All I can think of when I hear “Fort Ord” was a memory from when I was a kid, and there was a spinal meningitis outbreak there. Many deaths, too.
Also, I always want to call it Ford Ord.
I assume the battery is dead, but I don’t know if it’s bad, or the alternator just wasn’t charging it properly. It’s completely dead; won’t unlock, won’t start, and not even a glimmer when I turn on the dome light.
My car has the key fob and starter button. Before I left on my trip, I was having trouble with the car not unlocking from the fob, but it started fine. I don’t think I left anything turned on while I was gone.
My current plan is to get a new battery and see what that does. I’m not sure how I’m going to do that without a car, though.
My dad used to do flight training for a regional airline in Minneapolis. The only time the planes were available was overnight, so he and the other pilots would take the last flight out (usually to some small town), do their training and evaluation flights, and come back on the first flight in the morning.
Minneapolis gets cold, and it can be very hard to start a car that’s been outside all night. My dad had a Ford pickup truck with a diesel engine. He put a generator in the bed. When he got back in the morning, he’d start the generator, plug in the engine block heater, and do paperwork for an hour or so. He told me that some of the other pilots would just top up their tanks and leave their cars running overnight.
However, they did convince one flight attendand to do the same thing. The water vapor in her exhaust started condensing and freezing inside the exhaust pipe. When she got back, she not only had a cold car, but the exhaust was blocked by ice. Apparently they had to push the car into the hangar and thaw it out before it would start.
Some auto parts store have runners whose job it is to deliver auto parts to various repair shops, they should be able to deliver a battery to you. I’ve never tried it since I have spare cars to drive, but call around and see.
BTW, I am way late to this thread. Sounds like you had a good week, other than going off track.
Well, I missed all the driving on the third day and had to pay $10,000 for the damage (and they won’t tell me what it was), so I’d call it a mixed bag, at best.
Yikes! That’s some deductible.
After it was closed, we used to hold SCA events there.
There was a choice between two policies and I took the larger deductible.
I had to pay the full amount, and they said that if there was anything left after the repairs that I’d get a refund of the unused amount. The thing is, I only went into gravel on a fairly slow corner, and the car drove fine back to the pits. I’d still like to know what damage there actually was.
The cynical me has a dark suspition that might be a “business model” …
blowing out of proportion any damage there is (or isn’t) and hencely creating a side hustle / other income … or at least have your clients pay for worn out parts
in any case: the way they handled it was not very transparent.
Yeah, this really takes my opinion of SBRS down several notches.
Have you considered hiring a lawyer to make some inquiries on your behalf?
I want to see how it plays out. It’s only been a couple days, and they’ve been running other classes in the meantime. Maybe they haven’t had time to take a proper look at it yet.
I’ll contact them in a few days and ask what’s up.
“Not a glimmer” suggests something was left on. Whether you did it or the car did it.
I used to have a car that would be mysteriously dead in the morning now and again, maybe once every 3 months. Alternator tested fine and battery was newish. Quite the mystery. One evening I poked my head into the garage before locking up for the night and saw the dome light on. A ha! But we had not switched it on.
Like many cars of the last 20 years, when you shut down and open the doors the dome light comes on, and after the doors are closed remains on for a couple minutes afterwards to help light your way into the house or whatever. Turns out that model car was famous for a software glitch that caused the timer to hang and the light (& the lighting control computer behind it) to remain powered until it drained the battery. A software update at the dealer fixed that.
You probably don’t have that specific issue, but you probably did have some phantom load this one time that should not be there.
Possible, although I did have trouble with the remote unlock before my vacation, when I was using the car almost every day. I had to use my key to unlock it, but then it started fine. It does seem odd that there’d be enough juice for the starter, but not enough for whatever receiver picks up the unlock signal. I could have a weak battery in the fob, and that behavior was unrelated to what’s happening now.
Even if there was nothing left on, I assume that receiver draws some power as the car sits. I’ve also been hearing about how the radio needs to be reset after replacing the battery, so it must be drawing some current, too. I don’t know if those are enough to kill a battery in a week. It looks like it’s original to the car, so 8 years old.
Considering how my week has been going, I’d rather not pay for a new battery that I don’t need. I’d also rather not have the car towed if it’s something I can fix myself.